BEIJING — On the penultimate day of the U.S. Olympic swimming trials in 2004, Michael Phelps dived into the water in Long Beach, Calif., to swim against his then-nemesis, Ian Crocker, in the 100-meter butterfly. It was the last of Phelps’ 17 races over seven days at the trials. Just a teenager, he was thrust into a blinding, unfamiliar spotlight. He was, he admits now, near exhaustion. Crocker, who swam in just two events, was fresh.
“I got rocked,” Phelps said this summer, four years after Crocker thumped him that night by nearly four-tenths of a second, an eternity in a 100-meter swimming race.
That pool in Long Beach, though, served as a laboratory for Phelps and his coach, Bob Bowman, the Dr. Frankenstein behind the Phelps monster. Phelps’ quest four years ago was not only to qualify for six individual Olympic events (which he did) and to match or exceed Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals (which he did not), but to learn how much flogging his body could take.
Four years later, Phelps and Bowman have used the information from 2004, mixed it with Phelps’ more durable physique and come up with a program that has moved beyond wondering what the swimmer can handle to knowing exactly how he responds to each race, each challenge.
When swimming begins Saturday in Beijing, Phelps again will go after Spitz’s mark, a pursuit that almost certainly will be the focus of the Olympics’ first week. But he will do so with a confidence about his own ability to manage what likely will be 17 swims totaling 3,300 meters over nine days.
Given their history together and the amount of time, effort and research that Bowman and Phelps put in to designing this program, there almost certainly won’t be a moment when Phelps hits the water as he did against Crocker four years ago: dead. As Bowman said, “It’s beyond the experiment stage.”
“I think last time in Athens, while I thought we negotiated that fairly well, we had him all-out ready to go at trials and we just tried to do it again (at the Olympics), and it worked OK,” Bowman said. “But I think he can be better if we do it just a little bit differently.”
Better? That in itself should shake even the most ardent contenders in Phelps’ events. Gone is the 19-year-old prodigy introducing himself to the world, something Phelps did by winning six gold and two bronze medals in Athens. In his place is a 23-year-old man who is stronger physically, thanks both to maturity and a new weight-training program.
It is a measure of Phelps’ physical superiority that his schedule is based as much on logistical quirks as it is on what he is suited to. “He could win just about anything he wanted to,” said Eddie Reese, the head coach of the U.S. men’s team. “It’s just a matter of what he decides to concentrate on.”
Phelps has, for instance, the fifth-fastest time in the world this year in the 100 freestyle, a time posted during a comparatively casual preliminary swim at the U.S. trials. He has the fourth-fastest time in the world in the 200 backstroke. He could win medals in both. Yet he won’t swim either because Bowman and Phelps learned four years ago that even though Phelps may seem impervious to exhaustion, he has limits.
“The experiment stage was swimming the 200 backstroke at the last trials and doing three events in one night and figuring out if that was doable,” Bowman said. On the sixth day of those trials, Phelps was beaten in the 200 backstroke by world record holder Aaron Peirsol but won the 200 individual medley about 30 minutes later — both on a night in which he later swam a semifinal heat of the 100 butterfly.
“We figured out it wasn’t doable,” Bowman said. Though Phelps qualified for those Olympics in the 200 backstroke by finishing second to Peirsol, he dropped the event before arriving in Athens. The reason: Phelps’ performance the following day in the 100 butterfly, the event in which he was “rocked” by Crocker. After swimming three events in one night — including two blistering finals — the schedule caught up to him.
“It’s just too much,” Bowman said. “He did the triple. But what happened was, the next day, he really paid for it in the 100 fly. We’d like to be a little more perky in the 100 fly.”
So Phelps’ meticulously thought-out pursuit of history — Spitz won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Games, a mark that never has been matched — did not include the 200 backstroke at this year’s trials. Instead, it will include four events in which he holds the world record — the 400 individual medley, which will begin the meet; the 200 IM; the 200 freestyle, the only individual event Phelps entered but did not win in Athens; and the 200 butterfly. The only solo race Phelps will swim in Beijing in which he doesn’t hold the record is that pesky, perky 100 butterfly.
One of the few people who knows how arduous Phelps’ program is likely to be is Spitz, now 58. He said last month he saw three potential pitfalls in Phelps’ schedule: the 400 IM, both because it is the first event of a long week and because it is his most physically demanding race; the relays, because whether he wins gold is contingent partly on the performance of others; and the 100 butterfly, because even though Crocker didn’t swim well at this year’s trials (Phelps beat him by .73 of a second in the final), he still holds the world record.
Spitz also knows, however, that merely watching Phelps swim — as he wins race after race, potentially setting world records along the way — can be intimidating for the competition. Crocker, for instance, said he felt cooped up in his hotel room during his week-long stay at the trials, in which he swam just one event, and that being a spectator was difficult. Spitz believes Phelps’ slog — and the casual manner in which he shrugs it off, embracing what others can’t imagine — can be a deterrent for his opposition.
“It is quite difficult to imagine that one of his competitors is going to think that on any given day now, going forward, that it is going to be his day,” Spitz said, “because the past five times they have gotten up and been beaten by him — even in light of the fact you not only do your best time and break his old world record, and you are still looking at his feet. I think that is a little demoralizing.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
