Golden rivalry
Phelps, Lochte will battle to be world’s best swimmer
For the last two years, Michael Phelps, by his own coach’s estimation, has not been the world’s best swimmer.
His success in reclaiming that status from U.S. teammate Ryan Lochte in the Olympic swimming trials, which begin today in Omaha, will determine one of the biggest story lines of the London Games.
Will the country of kings and queens host the Olympic coronation of Phelps or the succession of Lochte?
“Omaha is going to be a good sign,” says television analyst Rowdy Gaines, a 1984 Olympic swimming champion. “It has to be, because they can’t take too many chances in their races.”
Only first- and second-place finishers in Omaha will qualify for the Olympic team. Given the depth and talent of the U.S. men, Phelps and Lochte will not be able to save their peak performances for the Games.
That will make their head-tohead matchups — likely in the finals of the 400-meter individual medley today, the 200 freestyle Wednesday and the 200 IM on Saturday — must-see barometers of how their rivalry will play out in London.
“Ryan and I are going to have our hands full with each other, probably all summer,” Phelps says. “Hopefully I’m in a better spot than I have been over the last couple years and I’m in better shape.”
Phelps, 26, says the London Olympics will be his last. He has 16 Olympic medals, 14 gold. Three more medals of any color would make him the most decorated Olympian of all time, passing Larisa Latynina, a Soviet gymnast who won 18 medals over three Olympics, ending in 1964.
Lochte, 27, who has won six medals in two Olympics, plans to continue at least until the 2016 Games.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Would I be the same athlete as I am today if he wasn’t there?’ ” Lochte says of Phelps. “No doubt about it, me and Michael, we push each other all the time.”
Advantage, Lochte
When they last met on the international stage, in the 2011 world championships, Lochte beat Phelps in their head-tohead races, the 200 freestyle and 200 IM, and finished with four individual golds to Phelps’ two.
That sparked speculation that Phelps, who won a historic eight golds in the 2008 Olympics, could be overshadowed or, perhaps, surpassed in London.
Lochte has become one of the most prominent faces of the U.S. team, signing endorsement deals with companies such as Gatorade and Ralph Lauren and appearing on the cover of this month’s Vogue.
Lochte could swim nine events in London, including the three relays. Phelps could swim eight, though he’s said he envisioned competing in fewer. For both, their performances in the trials will be crucial to finalizing their London plans.
“I want to go down as one of the world’s greatest swimmers,” Lochte says when asked if he would like to stamp his name on the London Olympics as Phelps did on the Beijing Games. “So it’s definitely a goal of mine.”
Lochte has gotten best-swimmer accolades from Phelps’ coach, Bob Bowman, since the 2010 Pan Pacific championships, where Lochte won four individual golds and Phelps failed to make the final in what was once his signature event, the 400 IM.
“In 2010, I was just kind of like, ‘Whatever,’ ” Phelps says. “But last year I was just like, ‘This is so frustrating.’ ”
Phelps cited lackadaisical training in recent years as the main reason for his subpar results. He skipped days and even weeks of practice in favor of sleeping in and playing golf, doing “30% of what I had planned for him to do,” Bowman says.
After the world championships last year and the losses to Lochte, that changed. “He’s been his normal self,” Bowman says. Phelps is back to doing 95% of what Bowman asks, averaging 50,000 meters (31 miles) a week in training.
“Michael is really about one thing and one thing only — and he’s been this way for 12 years — and that is the Olympic Games,” Gaines says. “Everything else is just preseason for him.
“He knows that the only thing that will matter 100 years from now is how he did in the Olympic Games.”
Phelps’ training has not approached the 80,000-meter-aweek peak he reached before Beijing, but it’s been enough to get him in shape for the grueling 400 IM, an event that combines all four swimming strokes. Phelps declared after the 2008 Games that he was done swimming it in major meets.
Then, in a Grand Prix in March, Phelps posted the fastest U.S. time this year in the 400 IM: 4 minutes, 12.51 seconds. It was far from the world-record 4:03.84 he swam in the Beijing final, but “being able to swim halfway decent times in that event is showing that I am making progress,” Phelps says.
He began to consider reinserting the 400 IM into his program. Since the event is on the trials’ first day, Phelps could make a strong statement by beating Lochte, the two-time defending world champion.
“I’ve spent pretty much the last three years getting beaten every single meet,” Phelps says. “It’s not fun.”
Good for each other
Phelps and Lochte are friendly outside the pool. In Beijing, where Lochte was third behind Phelps in the 200 and 400 IMs but won gold in the 200 backstroke (an event Phelps didn’t swim), they partnered in spades games during evenings at the athletes village.
The familiarity has changed the dynamic Phelps usually has with his rivals. The swimmer who would fire up at Bowman’s every mention of Australian star Ian Thorpe takes a much more academic approach to swimming against Lochte.
“I think both those guys are motivated to race each other,” Bowman says. “But I guarantee you that neither one of them walks into the pool every day thinking, ‘I’ve got to beat Ryan today,’ or ‘I’ve got to beat Michael today.’ They’re thinking, ‘I want to swim a certain time in the 200 back or the 200 IM’ ... and I think that’s why they’re good for each other.”
That’s not to say that each one does not think about how or what the other is doing. “You can’t be swimming events that Michael’s in and not be aware of him,” says Lochte’s coach, Gregg Troy. “There’s an awareness in training in that direction.”
While Phelps’ training has picked up only in the last year, Lochte has been drawing on his constant underdog mentality to go hard since the 2008 Olympics. He added Strongman training — pulling boat chains and throwing tires — and boxing to his regimen and is on a healthier diet after eating fast food every day in Beijing.
As is typical for Lochte, who seemingly has perfected the science of peaking in big meets and using everything else as a training session, his times in Grand Prix events this season haven’t been eye-popping. His best time in the 200 IM ranks fourth in the world (Phelps is first). He hasn’t posted a top-25 time in the 200 freestyle, where Phelps ranks second, or the 400 IM.
Just as a reading of times could not point to which way the rivalry will tilt in the trials, neither would an evaluation of the swimmers’ strengths and weaknesses, which seem to balance each other out. Phelps is stronger in the butterfly leg of the IM, but Lochte has an edge in the breaststroke and, to some extent, the backstroke.
The difference likely will come down to something much more intangible, something that Gaines says is within Phelps, that in Beijing got him through a 200 butterfly race when his goggles filled with water and that gave him the edge in his razorclose finish in the 100 butterfly.
“If the desire is there in London,” Gaines says, “he won’t be beat.”