‘God, can’t you just turn it off ?’
time. But then the results flashed on the screen and Phelps had somehow out-touched his rival, 50.58 seconds to 50.59.
By some combination of hardearned habit and racing genius, Phelps took an extra half-stroke going into the wall to pass the fading Serbian.
He turned immediately to hug his longtime American rival, Ian Crocker, in the next lane. “God, you must have a guardian angel with you,” Crocker told him.
Bowman said the improbable finish was as much about Phelps’ work ethic as luck or some indefinable talent.
“I probably made him do swims over a hundred times because he didn’t touch the wall correctly,” he recalled. “So he didn’t make a conscious decision to do that, but he had done so many finishes with good form over such a long time, that he pulled out the right one, which was a half-stroke. He’s a super-special athlete, but he had practiced every scenario of those touches forever.”
Phelps finished his run for eight the next night in the 4x100-meter medley relay, a race that was closer than most probably remember. successful session of potty training, and he’s not sure he would have that if he hadn’t gone through the harder times.
Phelps knows that as long as he’s reasonably young and healthy, people will ask about a possible comeback. He’s obsessed with riding his Peloton exercise bike, so he’s 195 pounds, same as at his last Olympics in Rio.
“It would be a lot easier for me to come back than it was for the last one, just because of me being in so much better shape now,” he said. “But I have zero goals to make me want to go through that grind again.”
Every time he feels the cold snap of the pool on an Arizona morning, he’s reminded that he’d much rather wake up, hug his kids and sit for a leisurely breakfast.
On the other hand, he thinks Bowman wants him to come back for a few races.
“He’ll text ‘100 free?’ ” Phelps said, laughing. “And I’m like, ‘Bob, shut up. Leave me alone.’ ”
“Did he say I want him to swim? I don’t think I really do,” Bowman said. “There’s a delicious irony in the fact that because he’s been on Peloton and takes care of himself really well, he’s in way better shape than he was when he came back in 2013. And I see him swim, you see the stroke and it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s not really too bad.’ But no, I definitely do not want him to have to go through all that.”
That said, Phelps will never be a casual swimmer. When he goes to “splash around” at Arizona State, he often asks Bowman to time him. Or when his buddy, Australian Olympian Grant Hackett, visits, they invariably end up in pool, competing.
“There are very few times when I don’t try to get up and go something semi-quick,” Phelps said. “It’s just natural. It’s the only thing I know, I guess.”
Bowman recently tweeted out a list of all the 200-meter butterflys Phelps swam that were faster than his initial world record from 2001. As Phelps sat with his wife, Nicole, at the kitchen table, he recalled the setting and circumstances for each of those 33 races.
“God, can’t you just turn it off?” she’ll say to him. He cannot. After the Rio Olympics, he returned to Beijing with Boomer and Nicole to visit the Water Cube, where he won his eight golds. He stood behind the blocks where his goggles broke and where he outtouched Cavic.
“The biggest thing for me was just the emotion, because I was in such a different place eight years later,” he said.
He can’t wait to tell Boomer and his younger son, Beckett, the story once they’re old enough to understand. But he says he’s equally excited about his current work, using his broader story to raise awareness of depression and other mental health issues. “The medals were a part of changing the sport. It was a steppingstone to changing the sport,” Phelps said. “I still have that journey, but I’m now trying to conquer a bigger, more powerful, more exciting mountain. Doing something that no one had ever done before in the pool, we’ve done it. So now it’s, ‘What’s next?’ ”