Learning to swim with one leg was tough -- she tried breaststroke and found herself going round in circles, or hitting the side wall because she was over-compensating.

You guessed it. One minute our diver was making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next he was doing a breaststroke in a fire bucket 300 feet in the air.

The breaststroke is the easiest way to swim.

After a fourth-place finish Monday in the men's 100 meter breaststroke finals at the World Aquatics Championships now under way in Shanghai, Mr. Kitajima was philosophical.

I think that was a good thing, as it helped me conserve energy and I really didn' t have to do the breaststroke for resting as I' d anticipated.