By John Lohn<\/p>\n
BEIJING, China, August 14. CLEARLY, Rebecca Adlington and Camelia Potec were not concerned about expending too much energy in the preliminaries of the women's 800 freestyle. Both women hovered around world-record pace for much of their swims before falling off the pace toward the finish. No worries, though, as the final still remains.<\/p>\n
Adlington established an Olympic record while winning her heat, clocking in at 8:18.06 to take down the 2000 record of Brooke Bennett, which sat at 8:19.67. Adlington has been superb this week as she already owns the gold medal in the 400 freestyle. As for Potec, she won her heat in 8:19.70, a good indicator for a final that will be missing a pair of big names.<\/p>\n
In a shocking development, Americans Kate Ziegler and Katie Hoff did not qualify for the championship final after turning in preliminary efforts of 8:26.98 and 8:27.78, respectively. The times were eight seconds off their personal bests. Having tackled an arduous schedule, a slate that has yielded silver in the 400 freestyle and bronze in the 400 individual medley, Hoff appeared tired. As for Ziegler, it was her second surprise miss of a final, going with the 400 freestyle.<\/p>\n
Qualifying in the third spot for the final was Denmark's Lotte Friis, thanks to a career-best showing of 8:21.74. Italian Alessia Filippi, who registered a swim of 8:21.95, was fourth into the final and fifth went to Australian Kylie Palmer (8:22.81). Rounding out the field for the final were Russian Elena Sokolova (8:23.07), China's Li Xuanxu (8:24.37) and Great Britain's Cassandra Patten (8:25.91).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Lohn BEIJING, China, August 14. CLEARLY, Rebecca Adlington and Camelia Potec were not concerned about expending too much energy in the preliminaries of the women's 800 freestyle. Both<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[53792],"class_list":["post-18821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz","tag-2008-beijing-olympic-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n