factor-of-7 performance slowdown on a simple rlog test

I tried another test, this one of performance.
The test was "rlog europe,v >/dev/null", where
europe,v is the attached file (please decompress
with xz).  It appears that the new rlog is
roughly 7 times slower than the old on this simple
test.  My platform is x86-64 RHEL 5; I compiled
with GCC 4.5.1 (the stock rlog is compiled with
an older gcc).

bash-4.1$ time ./rlog europe,v >old

real    0m0.004s
user    0m0.003s
sys     0m0.001s
bash-4.1$ !!
time ./rlog europe,v >old

real    0m0.004s
user    0m0.003s
sys     0m0.000s
bash-4.1$ !!
time ./rlog europe,v >old

real    0m0.004s
user    0m0.003s
sys     0m0.001s
bash-4.1$ time ./rlog-new europe,v >new

real    0m0.030s
user    0m0.028s
sys     0m0.002s
bash-4.1$ !!
time ./rlog-new europe,v >new

real    0m0.026s
user    0m0.024s
sys     0m0.002s
bash-4.1$ !!
time ./rlog-new europe,v >new

real    0m0.029s
user    0m0.025s
sys     0m0.004s