By John Lohn
\nPhotos by Peter H. Bick<\/p>\n
MONTREAL, Canada, July 26. WELL, we have the answer. It was just one bad race. Two days after failing to reach the final of the 400 freestyle, Michael Phelps broke the American record in the 200 free and walked away with a gold-medal showing. Phelps\u2019 victory and sizzling time provided proof that he\u2019s hardly off his game, and his poor swim in the 400 free preliminaries was an aberration.<\/p>\n
The bronze medalist in the event at the Athens Olympics, Phelps produced a time of 1:45.20, just under his former American standard of 1:45.32. In third place at the 50-meter mark, Phelps turned it on during the second leg and was under the world-record pace of Australia\u2019s Ian Thorpe, who owns the global mark at 1:44.06. Phelps had no trouble holding off Australian Grant Hackett, who took silver in 1:46.14. South Africa\u2019s Ryk Neethling was the bronze-medal winner with a time of 1:46.63.<\/p>\n
Phelps still has an arduous schedule ahead, as he\u2019s slated to swim the 100 freestyle, 200 individual medley and 100 butterfly in individual action. He\u2019ll also contest the 800 free relay and will participate on the 400 medley relay, whether it be in the prelims or the finals. Phelps\u2019 role with the medley won\u2019t be determined until after the 100 fly and 100 free.<\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s Brent Hayden was the fourth-place finisher with a time of 1:46.85 and was followed by Australia\u2019s Nicholas Sprenger (1:47.09) and the United States\u2019 Peter Vanderkaay (1:47.25). Italy\u2019s Emiliano Brembilla was seventh in a time of 1:47.63 and China\u2019s Zhang Lin was eighth in 1:49.45.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Lohn Photos by Peter H. Bick MONTREAL, Canada, July 26. WELL, we have the answer. It was just one bad race. Two days after failing to reach the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72948,"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":[],"class_list":["post-9790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n