Men's Freestyle

British swimming is staging a recovery after achieving no medals at Sydney 2000, the team came back from Athens 2004 with two Bronze medals and are aiming for four or five medals in Beijing. The men's freestyle events would be in the forefront of that attempt.

Form

At the Commonwealth Games, two British swimmers recorded times that ranked them in the World's top three for 2006. Simon Burnett won Gold in the 200m freestyle and Olympic bronze medallist, David Davies, won Gold in the 1500m freestyle, by over 10 seconds. David Carry won Gold in the 400m freestyle and Ross Davenport won Gold in the 200m freestyle.

Events	Men's A	Men's B	Competitor	2006 World Rank	2006 Ranking Time	Championship Medal
50 m Freestyle	0:22.35	0:23.13	Mark Foster	28	22.49
100 m Freestyle	0:49.23	0:50.95	Simon Burnett	2	48.57	Gold @ Commonwealth Games
200 m Freestyle	1:48.72	1:52.53	Ross Davenport	7	1:47.29	Gold @ Commonwealth Games
400 m Freestyle	3:49.96	3:58.01	David Carry	14	3:48.14	Gold @ Commonwealth Games
1500 m Freestyle	15:13.16	15:45.12	David Davies	3	14:55.46	Gold @ Commonwealth Games

Qualification

The qualification period is from 15 March 2007 until 15 July 2008. The A and B qualification times are shown in the table above for the specific events. To qualify for the Olympics a swimmer must achieve the 'A' standard or if no other British swimmer achieves the standard, a swimmer with the 'B' may be selected.

What to watch

It looks like Britain has genuine medal hopes in the men's freestyle events. We will be hoping to see David Davies, as he looks to improve on his Athens bronze. The first test will come at the World Championship in Melbourne from 17 March – 1 April 2007.