Local athletes at the London Olympics
How they fared Wednesday
• Swimming: Arizona Wildcat Alyssa Anderson won gold as part of Team USA's 4x200-meter freestyle relay. Anderson swam in the preliminary round only. In the final, the U.S. team of Missy Franklin, Dana Vollmer, Shannon Vreeland and Allison Schmitt set an Olympic record of 7 minutes, 42.92 seconds. Former Wildcat Clark Burckle finished sixth in the 200 breast stroke final with a time of 2:09.25 - 1.97 seconds behind gold medal winner Daniel Gyurta of Hungary. Three-time Olympian Darian Townsend of South Africa, a six-time national champion with the Wildcats, posted a 2:00.67 in the 200 individual medley preliminaries and did not advance.
Today
• 2 a.m.: 50 free preliminaries, Roland Schoeman, South Africa
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• 3:14 a.m.: 100 butterfly preliminaries, Albert Subirats, Venezuela
• 11:30 a.m.: 50 free semifinals, Schoeman
• 12:54 p.m.: 100 fly semis, Subirats
• 2:15 p.m.: Basketball, Andre Iguodala, USA
Friday
• 11:38 a.m.: 100 fly final, Albert Subirats, Venezuela
• 11:50 a.m.: Long jump preliminaries, Luis Rivera-Morales, Mexico
• 12:09 p.m.: 50 free final, Schoeman
LONDON - The Olympic flame will be extinguished in 10 days, and with it America's love affair with swimming. Michael Phelps will retire, and we'll see the rest of the U.S. swimmers come the next Olympics.
That is not the Australian way. The sport is a national passion, commanding attention year in and year out. Americans just wouldn't understand.
But trash talk? Americans understand that perfectly well, and that is what made the men's 100-meter freestyle Wednesday so compelling.
Nathan Adrian of the United States, who kept his mouth shut, won the gold. James Magnussen of Australia, who kept his mouth running, won the silver.
Or, as any good trash-talker would put it, he lost.
Magnussen had warned foreign swimmers to "brace yourselves," and he headlined an Australian relay team that billed itself as "weapons of mass destruction."
He failed to win gold. The relay team failed to win a medal of any kind. He all but said he choked.
"I felt pretty much bulletproof coming into this Olympics, and it is very humbling," said the 21-year-old Magnussen. "I have a lot more respect to guys like Michael Phelps who can come to the Olympics and back it up under that pressure."
The Americans have, and not just Phelps. Adrian won gold in the 100 free, giving the United States its first victory in the event since Matt Biondi in 1988. The U.S. women's 800-meter freestyle relay team won, too, thanks to a come-from-behind anchor leg by Allison Schmitt, who became the first swimmer here to win four medals.
Schmitt withdrew from college for a year to train with Phelps and his coach, Bob Bowman.
"They're like brother and sister," Bowman said. "They tease each other all the time."
Rebecca Soni set a world record in the semifinals of the 200 breast stroke, with the time difference between first and second place in her race the same as the difference between second and eighth. Soni, who swims for the gold medal today, said she did not exhaust herself in securing the record.
"There's still more in the tank," said Soni, a former USC star. "I'm really happy, but I'm not ready to celebrate yet."
Adrian said he would have been delighted to win a silver medal. The soft-spoken Adrian was ambivalent about whether the Australian trash talk had motivated him.
"Yes and no," he said. "I honestly tried not to think about any of that. I think the best place for me is to be the fourth-grader on the playground, oblivious to it all."
