KEY POINTS:
When New Zealand swimmers Moss Burmester and Corney Swanepoel first looked at Beijing's spectacular Water Cube Olympic pool, Swanepoel remarked: "It's short."
Unless someone's used a dodgy tape measure, it was a trick of the eye. But judging from the performances put up so far in the Olympic
meet, there might be something to it.
By last night, 10 world records had tumbled - not including swimmers dipping under the mark, but being beaten in the same race - and 20 Olympic marks. The remarkable thing was so many looked pretty ho-hum. At Athens four years ago, eight world-best times were set.
So is it something in the water? More likely a mix of factors is combining to make a compelling meet.
Take New Zealand's Helen Norfolk. In the 200m individual medley heats on Monday night, she swam 2min 13.5s, half a second off her personal best and a time good enough to have won the bronze medal in the Athens Games four years ago. This time she didn't even make the semifinals.
But as New Zealanders are improving their PBs in the middle lane, swimming's Rolls-Royce nations are roaring off into the distance outside them.
Technology is stepping in, with the highly publicised Speedo LZR one-piece swimsuits getting credit for shaving margins off swimmers' best times.
Then throw in the quality of the pool. At 3m, it is deeper than previous Olympic pools. Deeper water trims the amount of disturbance, allowing swimmers to slice through it quicker.
Then there are the simple factors of athletic excellence and the competitiveness which drive the finest swimmers.
Put it all together, and the times being turned in should not surprise.
"We've got a high level of swimmers, that's the first thing. We are looking at an exceptional level of swimming here," French coach Claude Fauquet said.
New Zealand coach Jan Cameron is not surprised at the chomping of records here. "It's a very good pool. Everybody is at their peak. You've got 164 countries here and lots of people swimming really well," she said.
Take out Michael Phelps, who yesterday heard the Stars and Stripes for the third time on top of the dais after the 200m freestyle final, and Cameron maintains the bunching of top quality swimmers is higher than before.
"People now have more tools to do the job. It is a great opportunity and people are grabbing that opportunity."
Cameron spoke of the "strange things" happening in the pool: swimmers breaking world records one day, then being beaten the next; or the staggering 4x100m freestyle final when the United States, having set a new mark in the semifinals, were the fastest of five teams to eclipse it the next day.
The most world records broken at an Olympic swim meet was 28 at Munich in 1972, the year American Mark Spitz nailed seven golds.
Of the 10 world records by late last night, there had been a spread of nations - Phelps had two, the US men's relay team two, with others to American backstroker Aaron Piersol, Australian individual medley ace Stephanie Rice and sprinter Eamonn Sullivan, Italian freestyler Federica Pellegrini, Zimbabwe backstroker Kirsty Coventry and Japanese breaststroker Kosuke Kitajima.
