All Hail, Righi! 43.19 in the 100 Free

Alex Righi ('09, Yale): You are my new best friend.

You don't even know me, but we're officially best buds ... and it's not because you're parents gave you an equally awesome name to mine.

Nay.

The reason is because you made a smart man out of this fan. I made a bold prediction on a wing and a prayer, and you brought it to fruition. My words are now prophetic. Heck, I may even consider myself smart now.

You see, the other Alex did exactly what this Alex said he was going to do at 1:33 pm today: he was going to smash his own Meet and EISL records, and by virtue of his exploits, would destroy the existing Pool Record. Not only that, but he also beat his competition by a full second in the process.

Yes, that isn't a typo. A full second. Actually 1.11 seconds to be exact. His swim was flawless and now he owns every record in the discipline.

Oh, and while we're at it: go ahead and add Alex Righi to the growing list (2) of Swimmer of the Meet candidates.

Fantastic swim, Alex ...

... Your friend,
Nostradamus

Cornell Breaks Another; Princeton Leads

The Cornell 400 Medley Relay added another record for the books. With a blistering opening leg, Cornell cruised to Meet, EISL, and Pool Record Gold. Their time was 3:13.61.

As for the First Day scores:

Princeton leads the competition with consistently strong showings in all events with a 442.

Princeton - 442
Harvard - 353 1/2
Cornell - 304
Navy - 266 1/2
Columbia - 266
Yale - 260
Brown - 197
Penn - 147
Dartmouth - 120

We'll see you tomorrow for Day 2.

Yale's Righi Ties Pool Record in the 50 Free

Alex Righi ('09, Yale) sprinted to victory with a blistering clip in the 50 Freestyle. Righi, for all intents and purposes, left his competition in the dust by .75 seconds.

In a nutty night of competition, it would only seem fitting that the shortest race in distance and quickest in time would set up to arguably be the most convincing blowout. I'm sure that Geoff Rathgeber ('09, Harvard) would put up a pretty convincing argument from his dismantling in the 200IM, but to win in such a short distance by such a convincing margin is pretty impressive.

Righi's 19.68 tied the DeNunzio Pool mark set last year by Tennessee's Barry Murphy.

Encore: Aemisegger Takes the Treble

An All-Points Bulletin needs to go out to Cristina Teuscher:

"Cristina, your records are not safe."

And you can thank Alicia Aemisegger again for that. Aemisegger broke through the field again in an Ivy Meet Record* time in the 200 Yard Breaststroke. Her time of 2:14.19, although not an Ivy Record [Jackie Pangilinan - 2:13.90, Harvard 2005], was good enough to rewrite both the Meet and Pool Records for the event.

Both were previously held by the aforementioned Teuscher in her record setting swim in 1999.

* The All-time meet record is held by Gabriella Csepe ('92, American) with a time of 2:13.95.