Zhang Lin's 6 golds dream crushed

-- Zhang Lin's dream of sweeping six gold medals at the National Games was crushed on Tuesday, when the world champion failed to qualify for the men's 100m freestyle semifinal.

Zhang has already won three gold medals.  But he came 58th of the 63 swimmers in the preliminaries, 16 of whom qualified for the semifinals.
  
One reason the favorite had to give up on the 100m freestyle gold was possibly due to a bad cold these last few days. 

-- On the same day, Zhang Lin was part of the men's 4x200 freestyle relay. But his team Beijing came second behind Shanghai, a team that includes Sun Yang, who came runner-up to Zhang in the 200m freestyle a day before.

Zhang Lin became China's first male world champion in Rome and world record holder in the 800m. He has sealed three titles at the National Games including 200m and 400m freestyle and 4x100 free relay.

The upside of not competing in the 100m freestyle may be that he leaves himself something in reserve for the exhausting 1500m freestyle event, which falls on Oct. 24, the last day of the swimming events.