• But she is only quick enough to qualify for eight place in final
Rebecca Adlington came perilously close to being knocked out in the heats of the 400m freestyle, even though she won her heat in masterful style. Her time of 4min 05.75sec was easily good enough to beat the seven swimmers alongside her, but it left the way open for the women going in the two following heats, and they took advantage.
Italy's four-time world champion, Federica Pellegrini, made almost exactly the same mistake. She and Adlington qualified seventh and eighth for the final, which only goes to show how fierce the competition is, and how good the final will be.
Neither Adlington nor Pellegrini will start as favourite. That burden will rest on France's Camille Muffat, a woman they both beat at the world championships in Shanghai last year, but who has kicked on since. She won the final heat, and qualified first for the final, in a time of 4min 03.28sec. She was pushed all the way by the USA's Allison Schmitt, who finished just three-hundredths of a second behind her. Muffat's team-mate Coralie Balmy was also impressive, winning her heat in 4min 03.56sec. The ferocious competition was way too stiff for Jo Jackson, who looks a shadow of the swimmer she was back in 2008 and 2009, when she won an Olympic bronze and a world silver.
If Adlington had been in a faster heat she would, doubtless, have been quicker herself. She was two seconds up by 300m, and allowed herself the luxury of easing down in the final 100m. But the trend at these Olympics has been for blisteringly fast heats, which, in Hannah Miley's words, turn into "real bunfights". After such a quick morning session, the final will, just like Miley's 400m individual medley, be about who can recover best in the afternoon.
Ryan Lochte was another swimmer wrestling with that problem. He was back in the pool, having had just a short night's sleep since he beat Michael Phelps in the 400m individual medley. Unlikely as it may seem, he faces tougher competition still in the 200m freestyle, which Phelps decided not to compete in. That could be a good choice, because the field is stacked. Lochte qualified second-fastest for the semi-finals in 1min 46.45sec, behind China's Sun Yang. Really, Yang should have had even less time to recuperate than Lochte after winning the 400m freestyle on Saturday night, but then, unlike the American, he probably didn't stay up till 2am. Sun beat Lochte in the finish, timing his guide to the wall a little better than his US rival.
The very next heat included South Korea's Park Taehwan, who won silver behind Phelps in Beijing, and finished second to Sun in the 400m. He was pipped in his heat by France's Yannick Agnel, the fastest man in the world this year. Great Britain's Robbie Renwick wasn't too far behind that quartet. Only four tenths of a second separated those five men - Monday's final promises to be one of the great races of the week.
As does the women's 100m backstroke. Australia's Emily Seebohm set a new Olympic record of 58.23sec in the heats, knocking half a second off Kirsty Coventry's time from Beijing. Seebohm, 20, won two relay medley gold medals in those Games. She looks in formidable shape, which is all the more surprising given that in 2011 she came down with swine flu, tonsillitis, bronchitis, and pancreatitis in the space of 12 months. She will square off with the 17-year-old starlet Missy Franklin, who was the second-fastest qualifier.
Seebohm pulled Great Britain's Georgia Davies along in her wake. Davies tied for bronze with Seebohm in the 50m backstroke at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. The difference was that was Davies's only medal at those championships, whereas Seebohm went on to win seven more. Davies swam brilliantly to finish in 59.92sec, qualifying sixth overall. The former world champion Gemma Spofforth also made it through, in 12th place.
Liam Tancock also eased through his heat, going shoulder-to-shoulder with France's world champion Camille Lacourt. Tancock eased down to finish in 53.86sec, second to Lacourt's 53.51sec. The final heat was faster still, with the USA's Matthew Grevers dipping under 53 seconds. Things didn't go quite so well for Great Britain in the women's 100m breaststroke, where both Kate Haywood and the 16-year-old Siobhan Marie O'Connor failed to get through the heats. The men's 4x100m freestyle relay team finished sixth in their heat, and so missed the final, which will be a tussle between the USA and Australia.
