Chinese athletes train incredibly hard, harder than I can explain in words and as a coach who has placed swimmers on five different Olympic Games teams, I have never seen athletes train like this anywhere in the world.
Lochte was eight-tenths of a second back; the third-place swimmer finished nearly eight seconds later.
She placed behind Ingvild Snildal of Norway (2 14.53) in a heat that was led by Greek first-place swimmer Eleftheria Evgenia Efstathiou (2 13.27) and Turkey's second-place athlete Gulsah Gunenc (2 14.44).
With a time of 23.28 seconds, Laban ranked seventh in the heat of eight athletes, defeating Kyrgyzstan's Vitaly Vasilev by 0.74 seconds and falling behind sixth-place swimmer Martyn Forde of Barbados by 0.20 seconds.
There were 1-2 sweeps by the United States in the men's 100 backstroke and 200 individual medley, but there were also five other countries — China, Japan, France, Brazil and the Netherlands — that placed two swimmers in the top eight of an event.
The United States failed to place a swimmer in the top eight in eight events.
This places swimmers at high risk for developing overuse injuries, nutrition deficits, and OT.
To guarantee a place, swimmers need to finish in the top two in their event and also make the 'A' standard time.
Finishing the race in 23.08 seconds, the Barbadian swimmer placed sixth ahead of Josh Laban of the United States Virgin Islands (23.28 seconds) but behind Kazakhstan's Stanislav Kuzmin (22.91 seconds).
The winner of the women's 50m freestyle finished only 0.16 seconds ahead of the sixth-placed swimmer.
Sir Chris Hoy cracked as his sixth Olympic gold was placed around his neck; swimmer Chad le Clos's dad Bert, celebrating his son's shock victory over Phelps in the 200m butterfly, became a viral sensation with his paternal eulogy.
