London Olympics Day 3: Lochte, stock and barrel

Author: Stephanie Kovalchik

Ryan Lochte beat compatriot Michael Phelps

in the 400m individual medley but has had a mixed

Olympics so far with a silver in the 4x100m freestyle

and fourth in the 200m freestyle races.

Image: NicoleElocin/Flickr.

After Day 3, the United States and China are now tied for the lead in overall medals, each having a total of 17. The US was helped by two golds and one silver in swimming. The big talker Ryan Lochte had a surprising missed medal in the 200m freestyle. Great Britain added one medal to its count with a bronze win in the men's team gymnastics after an appeal from the Japanese team demoted the Brits to a Silver and promoted the Japanese team to Silver - the poor Ukrainians dropped to fourth place from bronze. Still, with a total of just three medals after three full days of competition, the host country must be wondering where their home advantage is.

Where do today's swimming and weightlifting events stand in Olympic history? What follows are charts of the progress made this Olympic year.

Men's 100m backstroke. 1920 was the most impressive year for the shortest of the backstroke events. In this year, America's Warren Kealoha had a 1:15.2 time that was 7.4% faster than the standing Olympic record. Another American stole the show at London. Though, Matt Grevers's time of 52.16 seconds was only a 0.7% improvement on the Beijing gold-winning time, it was still enough to take gold and set a new Olympic record.

Women's 100m backstroke. Like her countryman Grevers, Missy Franklin improved on the Beijing gold medal time for her event by 1%. Her 58.33 time was enough to set an American record but was just short of a new Olympic record, which was set by silver medalist Emily Seebohm of Australia in a qualifying round. Neither swimmer touched Ulrike Richter's performance of 1976, which broke the standing olympic record by 6.1%. But who knows what might have happened if Missy hadn't had to swim the 200m freestyle semifinal just minutes before the backstroke medal race.

Women's 100m breaststroke. The first swimming medal for Lithuania was earned by Rūta Meilutytė in the 100m breaststroke, and this one was gold. Meilutytė's 1:05.47 would not have won gold in 2008, as it was 0.5% slower than Leisel Jones's gold-winning swim.

Men's 200m freestyle. The reigning world champion must have felt like he was replaying his teammate Michael Phelps's swim on Day 1 as he took the fourth place in his third event of the Games. Yannick Agnel, electrified from the 400m freestyle relay gold of the night before, raced past his competitors, leaving Sun Yang and Park Tae-Hwan to tie for silver. Agnel got the top spot tonight, but his time was 0.2% short of Phelps's Beijing swim.

The 200m freestyle was raced in 1900, then at a somewhat longer distance of 220 yards (201.2 m) in 1924. The event was subsequently dropped from the Olympic Programme and did not reappear until the 1968 Games of Mexico City.

Women's 58kg. China took away a second gold medal with Li Xueying's 246 kg lift.

Men's 62kg. While China has been dominating the women's weightlifting events, North Korea has been out-lifting the competition in all of the men's events. On Day 3, it was Kim Un-Guk who took gold with a combined best lift of 327kg for the featherweight category.

Because the maximum weight for the featherweight category has varied over the years, I have only plotted results from the 2000 Games forward, when the maximum weight for this class has been 62kg.