U.S. men looking for Phelps successor

Adrian next in line to take over leadership of American world championships team

INDIANAPOLIS — Nathan Adrian felt a little strange walking around the pool during the U.S. national championships.

Michael Phelps wasn’t there last week. Ryan Lochte was missing, too. And for the first time in almost two decades, when the American team for this month’s FINA world championships was announced, neither of its biggest men’s stars appeared.

“It’s weird, really weird,” Adrian said. “I’d been focused on swimming for so long, and then it was about swimming fast and then it was like you’re a veteran and then you look at it now and it’s like you’re one of the leaders of the team. It feels like it was only a few years ago I was nipping on the heels of Jason Lezak.”

Actually, it was eight years ago that Adrian captured his first national title.

But things change, and the search for new American leadership is starting all over again.

From Mark Spitz and John Naber in the 1970s to Matt Biondi and Rowdy Gaines in the 1980s, this changing of the guard has become relatively routine and virtually seamless. This time, it will be a more dramatic transition.

Phelps qualified for his first Olympics as a gangly teenager out of Rodgers Forge in 2000. From the point on, he, Lochte or both have represented the United States at every Olympics or long-course world championship team through the Rio de Janeiro Games last summer. Adrian was right there with them, at all those international meets since 2009.

So with Phelps retired and Lochte suspended, Adrian is in line to become the