WHEN swimmer Rebecca Adlington from Great Britain (pictured) won the 800-metres freestyle Olympic final last week, she finished in a world-record time of 8 minutes, 14.10 seconds, wiping more than 2 seconds off the previous record, which had stood for 19 years.
A day later, America’s Michael Phelps won a record eighth gold medal in a single games, having smashed seven world records along the way. In total, 25 world speed records have been broken in the pool since the Beijing Olympics began on 8 August. By contrast, just eight world records were set by the pool swimmers in Athens in 2004. Why the big difference?…
