By John Lohn
BEIJING, China, August 15. HE had just finished his gold-medal parade around the pool deck and was ready to race again. That's the way the week has gone for Michael Phelps. He's always been on the run, ready to tackle that next challenge. This time around, it was the semifinal round of the 100 butterfly.
Swimming in the first semifinal, Phelps was easy through the first 50 meters, picked up the tempo on the second lap a bit and finished in a time of 50.97 to nail down the second seed for the championship final. In that final, Phelps will be chasing the seventh gold medal of these Games to match the record set by Mark Spitz at the 1972 Games in Munich.
Winning the second semifinal, Serbia's Milorad Cavic earned the top seed by managing a time of 50.92, not far off his Olympic record of 50.76 from the preliminaries. Cavic has been known to swim some of his better races in earlier rounds, so it will be interesting to see if he can stay with Phelps when the pressure is on.
American Ian Crocker, the world-record holder, and Australian Andrew Lauterstein tied for the third-fastest time of the morning, as they both touched in 51.27. Crocker's world record sits at 50.40 and he was the silver medalist to Phelps in 2004. The rest of the field for the final will feature Kenya's Jason Dunford (51.33), Ukrainian Adriy Serdinov (51.41), the bronze medalist in Athens, Japan's Takuro Fujii (51.59) and Ryan Pini of Papua New Guinea (51.62).
