London Olympics Day 5: Great Britain good as gold

Author: Stephanie Kovalchik

Bradley Wiggins in this year's Tour

de France, which he won.

Wiggins followed up with a Gold

at the London Olympics in the

time trial and is now Great

Britain's most decorated Olympian.

Image by Sapin88/Wikimedia.

After Day 5 Great Britain is now at total count of 9 medals with two golds, one from the super Bradley Wiggins in cycling's time trial and the other from the duo of Helen Glover and Heather Stanning in the rowing. China still leads nations with 30 overall medals, still one ahead of the United States. Here are some details on the progress made at today's swimming and weightlifting events.

Men's 200m breaststroke. There were several novelties about this Olympic year's longest of the men's breaststroke events. The gold medal was the first swimming medal to go to a Hungarian, Dániel Gyurta. The silver medalist, Michael Jamieson, earned the first men's swimming medal for Great Britain, helping to increase the host nation's total medal count to 9.

Over the long history of the 200m breaststroke event, there have been some ups and downs in the top performance times. The most impressive Olympic year was 1964, the Games when Ian O'Brien swam a 6% faster time than the standing Olympic record. Though Gyurta's London winning time of 2:07.28 was only a 0.3% improvement on Kosuke Kitajima's Beijing gold-medal swim, it was still enough to set a new world record.

Women's 200m butterfly. Another gold for China and the first swimming medal for Spain. In this toughest of butterfly events, Jiao Liuyang blew the field away, reaching the wall at the last leg more than one second faster than silver medalist Mireia Belmonte García. Liuyang came in second to Liu Zige at Beijing, but this summer she beat Zige's 2008 time by 0.1%. This was enough to make an Olympic record but still nothing as impressive as Karen Moe's swim at the 1972 Games.

Men's 100m freestyle. The 100m freestyle has been raced since the inaugural Games of 1896. However, because of a brief absence and intervening 100 yrd race in 194, I have only plotted the 1906 results forward below.

Like the 100m sprint in athletics, the 100m free is the definitive test of the fastest man in water. So who took the title this Olympic year? At London, it was an American Nathan Adrian with a time of 47.52 seconds. Still, this year's gold-medal time was 0.7% slower than Alain Bernard's sprint at the Beijing Games.

Women's 69kg. North Korea's Rim Jong-Sim lift of 261 kg got gold but was nothing as impressive of China's Liu Chunhong's Beijing lift of 286 kg. Perhaps Chunhong benefited from a home advantage.

Men's 77kg. The men's middleweight event saw the first Cuban lifter, Iván Cambar, receive a medal, though it was only bronze. China added two medals to its overall medal count, the gold going to Lu Xiaojun with a lift of 379 kg. Since the event has had consecutive Olympic years at a maximum of 77kg, this has been the highest combined lift achieved, an impressive and perhaps surprising 3.4% improvement on the Beijing gold-medal result.