Last time I talked about how he got to the World swim championships. Here is Cullen Jones swimming the 50 free in Rome. There are some fast folks out there!

Note: I follow Cullen Jones on twitter, and read this tweet a few days ago: “Well the 50 went at expected 19.4 since I’m not at my fighting weight… 21.2 in the fly today not expected let’s get it !”

That’s quite a bit quicker than the National record he set last summer! Talk about a rapidly advancing sport. Another note: I’m now reading that Cullen is in Seattle at the Nationals right now. More news on that later.

Last year at this time, this blog was downright obsessed with Cullen Jones.  He was my great black hope for the Summer Olympics.  In the end, he brought home a gold medal for the 4×100 meter free relay.  It was a very exciting race, won by eight one-hundredths of a second.

And though I was disappointed that that was the only race that Cullen had qualified for, and he swam the slowest lap of the race, he did contribute to a gold medal victory in Beijing.

What’s he up to these days?

He has an endorsement deal with Nike, for one.  He’s also on the speaking circuit.

But the coolest thing Cullen Jones is about is encouraging other young swimmers.  Especially young black swimmers.  The pool where he once swam as an isolated black swimmer has seen an influx of students since the 2008 Olympics.

Cullen is determined to turn the black drowning statistic around.  A recent USA swimming study found that 58 percent of black children can’t swim. But he is an excellent example of turning that statistic on its ear.  He almost drowned at 5.  Then his mother signed him up for swimming lessons.  He didn’t just quit at learning how to swim.  He took his sport through college, to the Olympics, and now to professional role model.

He is working on a swim documentary that includes his trip to Beijing.  Be on the lookout for more good things from Cullen Jones.

I just looked at the highlights from the men’s 10K open water swim. I must say, that looks so hard, yet so cool. I saw a black man closest to the camera at the start of the race. At nbcolympics.com–you really should go there!–I found Allan Carmo from Brazil:

Let me know if you see any more black faces swimming at the Olympics!

Dig, I was just as excited as the rest of the country, nee the world–about Michael Phelps and his success. I mean, oh my goodness–how cool is that to set and reach big hairy audacious goals like Phelps did?

But I also found myself tripping, gawking and carrying on over every black or perceived to be black arm I saw in that Olympic pool.

Like the guy who won gold in the 1500 M free, pictured above. His name is Ou Mellouli, and he’s from Tunisia. My daughter argued with me as to whether or not this guy is black. We’ll he’s North African, ok? And I read that he trains with the American swim club the Trojans.

One night, I swear I saw some black arms come in second or third (or fourth?) of some heat of some stroke. Great details, I know, and since I can’t find my notes on the event, I checked online.

I found Malick Fall, from Senegal, who finished fourth in the third heat of the 100M breast stroke.

I also found a few others from African nations that looked more like that guy from Tunisia than the dude from Senegal, if you know what i mean. They likely didn’t get televised, but there were swimmers of color representing Madagascar, Algeria, and Mauritius, an island off the southeastern coast of Africa.

That doesn’t include several swimmers from Brazil and other South American nations.

I’m hoping the US produces more folks like Cullen Jones in time for the next Olympics. This trolling through the foreign archives is exhausting.

(edited to add: 50 M freestyle gold medalist from Athens, Malia Metella of France is also black. She came in 8th at the semi-finals this year).

If you blinked last night, like I did, you missed Cullen Jones in the 50 M semi-finals. I was all, NBC is wrong for that! I was fussing!

But we have a DVR, and I asked my husband to rewind it. And it was such a short clip that I almost missed it again! My husband had to explain to me that it was a high-light, not an actual race. I began a whole new round of ‘NBC was wrong for that!’

And I did what I do every day anyway. I checked nbcolympics.com, and I watched the whole race. So it was two heats. The first heat featured the two hyphenated dudes that swam the 100 M free–Wildman-Tobriner and Weber-Gale. Blah, blah, they came in 1 and 2. The second heat featured Cullen Jones and Gary Hall, jr., who was going for his 4th Olympics. Going into the race, Cullen Jones was the US record holder in the 50 M free, and Wildman-Tobriner, the world record holder.

Cullen Jones swam like I’ve come to expect him to swim. He starts slow, and then grows in speed until the last 15 M, when he races and reaches for the wall. Unlike his finish in the 100M, however, this time he didn’t take an extra stroke before touching the wall. He just reached and glided, and touched the wall first. His time of 21.71 ensured that he won his heat, and was second overall behind Wildman-Tobriner, whose time was 21.65.

The times to beat are Jones’ American record time, which he set earlier in the day at 21.59, and Wildman-Tobriner’s world record time, set last year at 21.28.

The finals are tonight. I can hardly wait.