Another great day

Pieter van den Hoogenband: Another great swim

Another fascinating day of action in the pool ends with Britain still searching for their first medal. But Olympic silver medallist Sharron Davies sees a lot of positives.

Everyone is saying we are having a bad Games but we're not. We are smashing British records in all the relays but are just being really unlucky and losing to fractions. For instance, in the women's 4 x 200m relay, the British team knocked four seconds off the old record in the heats and then another five seconds in the final.

That's a nine second improvement in one day. I think particularly with the British women, this has been a very encouraging Games. Look at someone like Nicola Jackson whose time in the relay would have put her in the final. She is a great prospect for four years time.

Facilities

But we desperately need facilities. It's so difficult to practice for these events where we are swimming in 50 metre pools, but are practising in old 25 metre pools.

Obviously the high spot was the men's 100m freesytle. It's the blue riband event and it was a great swim and an interesting race.

It went to Pieter van den Hoogenband who beat Alexander Popov.

Popov did look fantastic but it may be that he is a better bet over the 50m distance rather than the 100m.

But perhaps the performance of American Gary Hall Jr was the most interesting. He was the American who had created controversy over his comments regarding the Australian team at the start of the games, and he came third and edged out Australian Michael Klim to create a very quiet atmosphere in the arena.

More of a surprise was the defeat of Susie O'Neill who was beaten by America's Misty Hyman in the women's 200m butterfly.

Delighted

Misty Hyman: A surprise winner

An interesting aside was a talk that I had with Penny Haynes, a double champion from Atlanta, who failed to qualify for the finals this time.

I asked her whether she was disappointed about her performance this time round and she told me she was actually delighted because it meant that she had had her calling from God.

She's now about to set off to work as a missionary.

It has been another great day here at the Olympics - when the swimming is this competitive and records are falling, it really is an electric place to be.

I know that Britain are still searching for their first medal but we have to remember that the quality of the swimming has really improved since Atlanta.

Some of the times set in winning gold at those games would not be good enough to get into this year's finals!