Aleksejus Podpruginas | The Lithuania Tribune
Sensational performance by 15-year-old swimmer Rūta Meilutytė, who won the first gold medal for Lithuania at the London Olympics on Monday. Meilutytė finished in 1:05.47 to win the 100 meters women breastroke final, ahead of Rebecca Soni (USA), who touched in 1:05.55, and the third, Satomi Suzuki (JP), who finished in 1:06.46 to take bronze.
BBC reported “Meilutyte can’t quite believe she is Olympic champion. After her phenomenal time in the semi-finals, where she broke the European record and swam the fourth fastest time in history, her coach Jon Rudd described her as “super human” and said there was no limit to what she could achieve so I’m not sure what he’ll have to say after that performance.” “I can’t believe it. It’s all too much for me. I just can’t believe it,” Rūta said to the BBC reporter
Meilutytė broke the Lithuanian national record twice in her race for the final. The young girl also broke national and European records with a time of 1:05.21 in the semi-finals. At the finals, American swimmer Larson made a mistake by jumping into the pool before the signal, with Meilutytė taking full advantage after a short delay in the second start, leading by the 50 meters and continuing her spectacular race to take the gold.
The Lithuanian swimmer, in her first Olympic games, had already raised hope for the medal from the beginning, when in the first swimming heat she finished first with a national record of 1:05.56. The young girl has brought pride to the Baltic nation and great expectations for more medals for Lithuania in the London 2012 Olympic Games, surely encouraging great performances by the rest of the country’s team.
This is the first Lithuania’s Olympic medal in swimming. Three other Lithuanian swimmers had won Olympic medals before but only under the flag of the USSR
