Ian Thorpe, the retired Australian, once described emulating Mark Spitz's seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics as "unattainable for me and unattainable for anyone". Michael Phelps begs to differ. "I want to redefine the sport of swimming," says the 21-year-old American, who has already won six Olympic gold medals and set 16 world records.
Next weekend he begins his countdown to a fresh assault on Spitz's record - and with it the title of the greatest swimmer of all time - at the Beijing Olympics by targeting eight golds at the world championships here in Melbourne.
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"This is probably one of the biggest meets of my career," says Phelps, who plays poker to help him to relax, as he prepares to place another big bet on his place in the pantheon.
"A good world championships sends you into the Olympic year feeling confident and you want to keep everything rolling. This sets you up for what happens next year. What happens in Melbourne will hopefully set up a good Olympics." When he says "good", he means challenging Spitz's record.
The breadth and depth of his events make Phelps unique. His four Olympic individual gold medals - the same number as Spitz; both gained their other golds in relays - were won in the butterfly and individual medley. He also claimed bronze in the 200m freestyle in Athens and has since experimented with the 100m and 400m freestyle, posting world-class times in both. He is good enough at backstroke to have beaten the world record-holder, fellow American Aaron Peirsol, over 100m in January and would be one of the few serious challengers to Peirsol over the 200m if he added it to his list.
In Melbourne, Phelps will return to his Athens schedule: he will defend his world crowns in the 200m freestyle and 200m medley (in which he is also world record-holder) and then race for glory over 100m (all-time No2 behind teammate Ian Crocker) and the 200m butterfly and 400m medley (world record-holder in both) as well as helping all three American relay quartets to what on paper looks like inevitable victory.
Thorpe, who retired in November aged 24, is the only recent great to have a claim to similar versatility. In Fukuoka in 2001 the Thorpedo came within a fingertip of the magical seven golds in a global event when he fired to a record six world titles, three of them individual and four in world-record times (200m, 400m and 800m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle relay). He missed gold by half a second in the 100m freestyle.
It was an extraordinary performance, and who knows what might have been possible had Thorpe's Olympic swansong in Athens fallen in 2002, not 2004, when he took the 200m freestyle crown, retained the 400m title and won bronze in the 100m. In 2002 Australia still led the way in the 4x100 and 4x200m freestyle relays and Thorpe could have stretched to a medal over the 200m medley and possibly even the 100m backstroke. His coach, Doug Frost, had something like that in mind, but Thorpe left him and it never happened.
With such a vast programme and so many targets swilling around him, how does Phelps hold his nerve? "The key for me is not getting hung up on one race," he says. "If I start off with a bad race, and I can put that race behind me and get ready for my next race, I'll be able to manage everything."
The alarming thing for his rivals is that those bad races are increasingly rare and Phelps is in the shape of his life. He has increased his strength training this year, pumping weights several times a week at his base in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Weight gain takes the form of pure muscle. "He's gained strength and speed that will help move him to the next level," says his coach, Bob Bowman.
Then there's Phelps's acid advantage: while Thorpe was known for the advantage his size 17 feet gave him over rivals, the American (a mere size 14) is aided by a hidden physiological characteristic. Tests suggest that his body produces less lactic acid - the substance that makes your muscles ache during exercise - than other athletes. Where most world- class swimmers end a race with a lacticity level of 10 to 15 millimoles per litre of blood, Phelps registered a freakish 5.6 after setting a 200m butterfly world record in 2003. Worse still for his foe: a test taken in a final that produced a reading of 10 was followed by a semi-final swim and a second lactate reading that raised eyebrows in the lab: it was lower after the semi, suggesting that Phelps is actually recovering while swimming at below peak but at semi-final speed. The perfect multi-eventer.
Prime among his rivals in Melbourne is Crocker, the world record-holder in the 100m butterfly. He has stopped Phelps twice before at world championships. In the medley events the challenge will come from the Hungarian Laszlo Cseh, the US based Tunisian Oussama Mellouli and the American No2 Ryan Lochte. In the 200m butterfly only China's Wu Peng can hope to challenge him.
Pieter van den Hoogenband, who beat Thorpe in the 200m freestyle in Sydney in 2000, is still going strong. The Dutchman pushed Phelps into bronze when both finished behind Thorpe in Athens. A year later, with the top two resting, Phelps took the world title and put behind him the low of a drink-driving charge that followed his heady success in Athens and a move away from home, to Michigan University, when Bowman took up the top coaching post there.
"He has come through that now and over a period of two years or so has developed more ownership over his swimming," says Bowman. "He is showing more maturity about the decisions he makes in regards to training or the way he runs his life away from the pool, and all of those are coming together to produce some spectacular performances."
Asked which races he was most looking forward too, Phelps cited the 200m butterfly and 400m medley, because the world records holder in both events had not raced them at world level since Athens 2004. As for which was the hardest of all his races, he replied: "All of them."
His strategy in tackling them would be the same as it had been in Athens: "To win one, stay relxed and take one event at a time. It's going to be one by one here."
He revealed for the first time the nature of his preferred form of relaxation away from the pool: gambling. "There are a few casinos around. It's just a hobby. I play about once a week. I pretty much know the guys who I'm playing. I've been playing at a casino just over the Canadian border for two or three years now."
And the stakes? Through somewhat nervous laughter, Phelps replied: "I'll keep that to myself." He added, with a sense of self-assurance: "Nine out of 10 times, I win. I'm picking it up a little bit more every time."
Why poker? "It's just time away from the pool, a place to go and relax for a few hours, play poker and grab some food."
Last August Phelps lowered his own world records over 200m butterfly and 200m medley and led the US 4x100m freestyle quartet off to a world record. Then last month, out of the blue, he took another slice off the world mark over 200m butterfly to take to 16 the number of indvidual world records to his name. Only Spitz (26) and Roland Matthes (18), of East Germany, held more world records. "With more rest, he'll be able to go out faster and more easily and that should set him up for a time drop," says Bowman, head US men's coach in Melbourne.
"I think some of my times have got faster," said Phelps in Geelong. "In the 200m butterfly, 200m individual medley, 200 freestyle, my times are improving. I feel more relaxed than I was. I was a deer in the headlights going into the Olympics with all the media. I didn't know how to take it, but with that and Sydney (the 2000 Olympics) under my belt I am more relaxed."
The results that could flow in Melbourne will undoubtedly re-ignite the debate: who's the greatest? Could there ever be an answer to such a complex quandry? "It depends what happens with my career between now and the end," says Phelps.
"I want to redefine the sport of swimming. I'd like to go down as one of the best ever," says Phelps. Three golds in Beijing would tie him at nine golds with Spitz, the athletes Carl Lewis and Paavo Nurmi and the gymnast Larysa Latynina as the most successful Olympian in history. Seven golds would rocket him to 13. The greatest of the greats? Get ready for it.
Source: SwimNews
