Big names disappoint

The opening ceremony might have heralded the start of the Olympics and the archery might have been the first non-football competition to get underway, but it was clear to see that swimming is still the biggest draw of the first week of the Olympics.
Despite the seemingly inexplicable empty seats at the Aquatics center in the Olympic Park the atmosphere was buzzing with a sprinkling of world stars and home favorites on display.
Surprisingly, most of the big names disappointed as the struggled to roll out the cobwebs in error strewn displays.
Michael Phelps barely qualified in the 400-meter individual medley putting on a struggling show, which he later shrugged off. Olympic champion Park Tae-hwan was originally disqualified but later reinstated and world record-holder Paul Biedermann failed to make the final in a surprising first day.
The women stars too did not fare much better. Stephanie Rice was the eighth qualifier in the final and Britta Steffen and her Germany team even failed to make the final of their event rounding up a bad morning for both herself and her beau Biedermann. Two men who bucked the trend on the morning were KosukeKitajima and Ryan Lochte who both did extremely well.
The biggest cheers were saved for most of the British swimmers, in particular Robbie Renwick and David Carry whose names the crowds chanted incessantly while clapping along to urge them to greater heights.
But the most interesting story of the evening was possibly Pakistani female swimmer Anum Bandey. The 15-year-old Bandey broke her Pakistani record at the Acquatics Center but in a stark reminder of how far behind they are from the rest of the world still found herself a distant fourth out of four in her heat.
Bandey's time of 5.34.64 was over two seconds quicker than her qualifying effort (5.37.11), meaning the teenager set a new national record, but still finished nearly 47 seconds behind the third place finisher.
“You can learn a lot from here. I have learnt a lot from the older athletes. I am still young I'm 15,” she said in the mixed zones after her race.