It’s looking gloomy for Zim

the end of Day Five on Tuesday night, Team Zimbabwe’s tally read zero after the country’s biggest medal hopeful, swimmer Kirsty Coventry failed to get a podium place in the first two events that she took part in at these on-going London Games — the women’s 100m backstroke and the 200m individual medley.
Coventry first failed to reach the final of the women’s 100m backstroke on Sunday, falling by the wayside in the semi-finals but she managed to reach Tuesday night’s final of the 200IM.
But the two-time Olympic Games women’s 200m backstroke champion found the going tough in the final of the 200IM in which she finished a disappointing sixth in 2:11.13 in a race which was won by young Chinese swimmer Shiwen Ye in a new Olympic record of 2:07.57.
In fact, Ye became the sixth woman to win both medley events (400 and 200m) at the same Olympic Games, and easily the youngest at 16.
Before Ye’s remarkable achievement on Tuesday night, Yana Klochkova of Ukraine was the youngest to win both medley events at the same Olympic Games, at age 18 at the Sydney Games in Australia in 2000.
Ye also became the first swimmer aged 16 or under to win two individual medals at the same Olympic Games since Diana Mocanu at Sydney 2000.
And how Zimbabwe’s Coventry wished she was in Ye’s shoes at the London Games in which she is still looking at adding one more medal to the seven — two golds, four silvers and one bronze — that she mined at the last two Olympics in Athens, Greece, in 2004 and Beijing, China, four years later.
Talk in some quarters of the 28-year-old Zimbabwean swimmer going for two more medals prior to the London Games was too ambitious, partly due to the fact that time has caught up with Coventry to some degree as was evidenced by her poor performance in Tuesday night’s final of the 200IM.
But Coventry was not disappointed by her poor showing on Tuesday night and partly attributed this to the knee injury and Pneumonia that she had at the beginning of this year.
“I would have loved to have medalled (on Tuesday night) but from what I have had to go through this year, I’ll take 6th with a smile on my face,’” Coventry Twitted soon after Tuesday night’s 200IM final.
Coventry’s hopes of picking up a medal in the 200IM were heavily diminished when she only sneak into the final as the slowest qualifier and had to start one of her flagship races in lane eight.
However, Coventry has the chance to correct that today when she competes in the opening heats of her favourite stroke — the 200m backstroke.
In fact, Coventry will be going out for hat-trick of victories in the Olympic Games women’s 200m backstroke event after having first won it at the 2004 Athens Games in Greece.
She successfully defended her title at the next Games in Beijing, China, four years later where she also picked up three silver medals to bring her medal haul to seven and becoming the most decorated Zimbabwean swimmer in history.
In today’s women’s 200m backstroke qualifying rounds, Coventry has been placed in Heat Five where she will be fighting for a place in the evening’s semis with Yige Yao of China, Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands, American Missy Franklin, Australia’s Meagen Nay, Laure Manaudou of France, Great Britain’s Stephanie Proud and Eyglo Osk Gustafsdottir of Israel. And among the eight swimmers who are in this morning’s Heat Five of the women’s 200m backstroke, Coventry has the fifth-best qualifying time of 2:08.41. She is also the Olympic Games record holder in this event with a time of 2:05.24, set at the Beijing Games in China in 2008.