Well, there you go. Watching the Olympic trials and trying to follow a swimmer who is not the one NBC wants you to follow can be tricky. Gary Hall jr. cast a big shadow over Cullen Jones in the lead-up to the 50 free finals. They followed him with his big superhero cape. They did the brief bio of him. . . ‘and there’s Cullen Jones, the American record holder in this event.’ So there was that.

Then the two hyphenates, Wildman-Tobriner and Weber-Gale were so competitive in the 100 M finals and the 50 M preliminaries. The hype was longer than the race itself. It was over in 21.47, as Weber-Gale took the race. At 21.65, Wildman-Tobriner out touched Cullen Jones, who finished third at 21.81. Mind you, as I was only watching the black arms, I thought Cullen Jones had won the race. In the slow-mo replay, I saw that he took an extra stroke at the wall, as he had done throughout the Olympic trials, coming in 3rd each time. When he won his heat in the prelims, that extra stroke was absent.

So, I am disappointed that Cullen Jones didn’t dominate at the Olympic trials, but I am glad that he made the team in the 100 free, and will likely be on the 4 x 100 relay team.