Underwater photos from the finish in the men's 100-meter butterfly finals, both just before Phelps and Cavic touched the wall and just after. It's amazing how far Phelps was behind before his half-stroke.
Cavic seems like an interesting guy and is handling the close loss well. He wrote an entry on his blog entitled "Success!!!"
On winning a SILVER medal: I am completely happy, and still in complete disbelief that I was able to achieve this feat! I'm not joking... It's a tough loss, but I'm on cloud nine. I congratulated Phelps and his coach Bob Bowman. I'm just glad the race was fun to watch for everyone. It was a pleasure for me, really.
Cavic came to Beijing with the goal of winning the bronze in this event; he called his silver "the greatest moment of my life". I also liked this account of his pre-race routine:
Hall said he could tell before the race that Cavic was in the right frame of mind to challenge Phelps, when he adopted the same prerace routine as Phelps by putting one foot on the starting block and turning to face in his rival's direction.
"Most guys are trembling when they have to step up to Michael Phelps," Hall said. "But he did not fear him, and it showed."
Cavic said he was not "staring him down" before the race.
"Both of us had metallic goggles, so I couldn't see his eyes, and he couldn't see mine," Cavic said. "Maybe he was able to see the reflection of himself, and he was like, Hey, I look pretty good. I saw myself in his reflection and was like, I'm keeping this under control."
Update: Here's a look at how the Omega timing system used in the Water Cube works. The timing system is more accurate than the pool architecture:
OMEGA touch pads and starting blocks are part of an integrated timing system capable of recording times to the nearest 1/1000th of a second. However, because it is not possible to build swimming pools in which each lane is guaranteed to be precisely the same length, Olympic and World Records are still recorded to the nearest 1/100th of a second.
(thx, david)
Update: Sports Illustrated has a frame-by-frame look at the Phelps/Cavic finish. For the conspiracy theorists out there, I believe the fifth frame tells the tale pretty well.
