Shanghai 2011: A Review.

It has been over a week since the closing of the worlds, but the two weeks have been interesting. No US medals in the first week that is made up of diving and synchronised swimming. However that changed in the final week. More in a moment.

But first, the water polo. Congrats to this year's champions. Italy defeated multi-time world champs Serbia in the gold medal match. Croatia won third place. Greece defeated China in front of their home crowd to win gold on the women's side. We'll see how they'll do in London in a year.

Now back to the final week of action. The swimming. First USA medal was an open water 10k gold. And then it was on from there. USA swimming piled them up, resulting in the USA's move to 2nd in the medals race behind China (the host country).

And it also shocks me that only a couple world records fell in the swimming-in the hands of Ryan Lochte and Sun Yang, who broke the old record in the 1500m set by Grant Hackett.

What we learned from this? A whole lot. Remember swimming is usually in the second week of the Summer Olympics (if you include the midweek soccer kickoff, which is three weeks altogether), and who knows what's gonna happen in that week of swimming next year at this time in London.