Athletics: The
men's 20-km walk just wrapped up; Turkey's
Recep Çelik, 25, finished 49th with a time of 1:32:54, which was 13:53 behind the gold medallist. There were two disqualifications.
Swimming: Heats for this morning events were run on Thursday. 17-year-old
Christin Zenner of Germany finished last in the
second heat of the women's 200-metre backstroke; her time was 2:20.28, just over 15 seconds slower that the gold medallist's final time. There was one
DNS. In the men's 100-metre butterfly,
Marco Camargo of Ecuador, 19, had the slowest heat time in
heat one: his time of 57.48 was just over seven seconds slower than some freak's gold medal time. There was one
DNS in the heats here, too. Next, the women's 800-metre freestyle: in heat one, 16-year-old Polish swimmer
Karolina Paulina Szczepaniak -- this is why I don't do a podcast -- put in what appears to be a rather slow time of 9:08.87; the gold medal time in the final was 8:14.10. Another
DNS in the heats here, too. And finally, the men's 50-metre freestyle, which was an event designated for wild card entries, only one of whom could finish last. The slowest time came in
heat two from
Stany Kempompo Ngangola, 34, representing the Democratic Republic of Congo (the one that used to be Zaire). His time of 35.19 seconds was 13.89 seconds behind the gold medallist's time of 21.3 seconds in the final.
Mr. Kempompo Ngangola runs a real risk of being anointed the next
Eric the Eel by the media. A slow swim from a competitor representing a country in equatorial Africa -- the ostensible parallels are all too obvious. I'll hazard a guess and say that his story will be nothing like Moussambani's, but that won't stop anyone from trying. I only have the numbers at the moment, but let me use what little information I have to place his result in some kind of context. The 50-metre event, as I said, had a number of participants there because of a wild card draw; any one of them could have finished last. Mr. Kempompo Ngangola's heat was particularly slow: all but one had a time of more than 30 seconds. His performance, in other words, was not singularly awful.
What I'm trying to say is this: the first patronizing story I see about this event, watch out.
Standings to date: Poland and Germany each add their third
DFLs, moving them into fourth and seventh place, respectively.
Labels: athletics, beijing 2008, dem congo, ecuador, germany, poland, swimming, turkey