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.

Rathgeber's 200IM Romp; Record Smashed

Geoff Rathgeber ('08, Harvard) blasted his own existing Meet and EISL League records Thursday night by putting together a near flawless effort that saw him shave a large chunk of time. His existing records both stood at 1:46.11 and were set last year in front of his home fans. Now he can lay claim to 1:44.67 in the discipline.

His margin of victory, to further display the clinic he put on in the pool, was nearly 4 full seconds.

In addition, Rathgeber's heroics erased a pool record that was held previously by Andrew Thirlwell of the University of Tennessee (2006) that stood at 1:46.92.

"Good ol' Rocky Top! Ousted by a better Ivy!"

In the 500 Free, It's ...

... A TIE?!?!

No way. I don't believe it. Not possible.

But yet that is where we stand. The one thing we can say is that Cornell takes another 1st place point setting (err...make the 2 1st places). After 500 yards of water, the Cornell tandem of Mike Smit ('07) and Wes Newman ('09) decided that they would rather tie than have to go back to Ithaca, N.Y. with dissention in the ranks and bragging rights.

The good news for Cornell is that this random act of kindness and unselfishness has distanced Cornell atop the leaderboard for the time being.

Good teamwork, lads!

Cornell's Dual-Meet Triumphs Recognized

Ladies and gentlemen,

Before we get into tonight's action, the Ivy League would like to make a special presentation. As is the case every year, the Ivy League champion will be crowned at the end of Saturday's session.

During the regular season, however, the nine schools of the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League compete intensely in a dual-meet season that begins in November and concludes in early February. It is the League's honor present this year's dual-meet winner with a trophy to recognize this very significant accomplishment.

With an undefeated 8-0 dual-meet record, the 2006-07 version of the trophy was awarded to the Cornell Big Red.

Congratulations to Cornell on a tremendous dual-meet season.

Cornell Propels to the Lead

Cornell laid down the gauntlet in the 200 Freestyle Relay to win quite comfortably in the first event of the night. The team was led by strong swims in each of the disciplines by Mike Smit, Dave McKechnie, Brad Gorter and Wes Newman. The winning time of 1:19.96 was second only to Princeton's Ivy Record swim in 2003.

The excitement in the event actually came in the race for 3rd through 5th place, which saw a logjam of 3 teams differentiated by .01 seconds. Tobin White's anchor leg allowed Columbia to nip both Yale and Pennsylvania and secured the vital 3rd place points.