[q]From The Sunday Times
July 6, 2008
Is this the world’s greatest athlete?
Six golds in Athens may prove to be just a warm-up act as Michael Phelps bids to rewrite the record books in Beijing
David Walsh
For the past eight days the US Olympic swimming trials have been taking place in Omaha, Nebraska. In a country with formidable depth in the sport, the trials are a tough and often cruel clearing house for would-be champions. Only the first- and second-placed finishers make the team to compete in Beijing - and in some events America has the three top-ranked competitors in the world.
For Michael Phelps, the trials have been something else. He is attempting to qualify for eight events in Beijing next month, and although he won’t say it, he is attempting to win eight gold medals there. In some of the disciplines his greatest rivals are the guys he must beat in Omaha, something akin to Roger Federer having to beat Rafael Nadal just to compete at Wimbledon.
Phelps is 23 and preparing for his third Olympics, so he should be getting used to the trials and the avoidance of tribulations. That isn’t to say it has been easy. On the opening day’s competition at the Qwest Centre in Omaha, he had to contend with the exceptional Ryan Lochte in the final of the 400m individual medley.
Lochte is gunning for Phelps. He knew that if he could wound him in Omaha, it would be easier to beat him in Beijing. In an epic final, Lochte produced an astonishing performance to get inside of Phelps’s world record. It was good enough to get him the second qualifying spot in the event; Phelps beat him by 0.83 of a second to lower his record by almost a full second.
They raced side by side for more than four minutes. Phelps gained an advantage in the opening butterfly leg, lost a little in the backstroke and a little more in the breaststroke. When they turned for the final 100 metres of freestyle, they were virtually level. Phelps then went even harder, edging ahead, inch by inch, until he had taken a small but decisive advantage. “That was one of the most painful races I’ve had,” he said afterwards. “Everything was left in the pool. I couldn’t have done it without Lochte. He’s a great friend and great competitor.”
These trials are just one of the stepping stones he has had to negotiate on his journey to Beijing. But this is not just about Beijing. It is something far greater than one swimmer’s Olympics.
Already Phelps is the most gifted swimmer we have seen. It is quite possible that he will win eight gold medals next month, to add to the six he won as a 19-year-old in Athens. Eight golds in Beijing would make him the most successful athlete in the history of the Olympic Games. And then he could be reaching his peak in London in four years.
Perhaps we are talking about the world’s greatest sportsman. What is it in sport that inspires? We speak of skill and technical brilliance, of mental toughness and tactical cunning, of the ability to perform on the biggest days. All are important, but it is sheer, almost freakish, talent that most thrills us. The little flick with his left foot that lifted the ball over Colin Hendry’s head, followed by the flashing right-foot volley defined Paul Gascoigne’s gift and endeared him to lovers of fine football.
Brilliance momentarily magnetises us, but the greatest sportsmen must produce more. Primarily, they must dominate their sport. That is difficult but not impossible for the one who is part of a team. Did not Diego Maradona win the 1986 World Cup virtually on his own (or, at the very least, in the company of quite ordinary compatriots)? And there was a time when Jonah Lomu was the New Zealand rugby union team.
Nobody now dominates football as Maradona once did, nor has rugby seen a successor to Lomu. It is to the individual sports that one looks for the greatest of this era. Tiger Woods and Federer are the two most obvious contenders, but that is partly because they dominate high-profile sports that are easily understood and widely televised.
Can one eliminate Phelps because he is a swimmer? Of course not. Consider where he has come from. At the age of 15 he became the youngest male swimmer to set a world record when he lowered the mark for the 200m butterfly. That was the spring of 2001. At that time the swimming world thought him a phenomenal performer in that event. They didn’t understand the half of it. Soon he was swimming every stroke at world-class level.
In a six-week span in 2003, just after turning 18, he set seven world records. A year later he was expected to announce his greatness at the Athens Olympics. Six gold medals and two bronze was an impressive statement, and all that has happened since then is that he has got better. At last year’s world championships in Melbourne, his seven gold medals would have been eight if the US had not been disqualified in one of the relay finals.
It is easy to believe that Phelps works as hard at his sport as Woods and Federer do at theirs: how could a day on the driving range or half a day on the practice court be more difficult than a pair of two-hour sessions in a swimming pool? Phelps does that virtually every day; seven days each week. There are maybe one or two days a year that he doesn’t get in the water.
Greatness may be sustained by hard work, but the source of Phelps’s success lies in extraordinary talent. Generally, Olympic swimmers are freestylers or backstrokers, breaststrokers or butterfly specialists. Phelps began with the butterfly, conquered it and has since moved on to the freestyle; his domination of the 200m and 400m individual medleys speaks of world-class mastery of swimming’s four strokes. He did not swim the backstroke events at the trials despite being the second fastest man ever over 100m and the third-fastest over 200m. Imagine Federer as good on clay as on grass courts.
Woods has a similar versatility to Phelps. He is an extraordinary putter, the most wonderful iron-player and brilliant from any position around the greens. But Phelps’s versatility isn’t merely technical. He has proved himself the best in the world at distances ranging from 100m to 400m. Think of Asafa Powell winning both the 100m and 400m at the Beijing Games. Yet the most telling testimony to Phelps’s greatness lies in what he will have to do to win eight gold medals in Beijing.
Depending on how many of the relay preliminaries he will be asked to race, he will have about 18 races in eight days. It is why he trains as he does. And perhaps the most bewildering certainty of all is that if Olympic swimming competition was held over 10 or 12 days rather than eight, Phelps would be chasing 10 or 11 gold medals rather than eight. He is that versatile and that talented.
To the untrained eye, all champion swimmers appear to have identical physiques – tall and lean, with broad shoulders and slim hips. Yet it doesn’t take long to notice how Phelps differs from the mould. His torso is unusually, almost freakishly, long, while his legs are relatively short. Make a call based on the length of his legs, and you would put him at 6ft, but he has the upper body of a 6ft 8in giant. His actual height is 6ft 4in, but the lower body, the bit that sags most in the water and creates resistance, is relatively small.
Nature helped in other ways. He was naturally flexible and better able to propel himself through water. He had what his coach, Bob Bowman, would call “an aquatic body”. Given that he seemed born to swim, it was fortunate that his older sisters, Hilary and Whitney, were high-class swimmers. Whitney was expected to make the US team for the Atlanta Games in 1996 but didn’t qualify, and although that was a huge disappointment for the family, it didn’t lessen Michael’s determination to reach the top.
He didn’t have an easy ride. At elementary school he was found to have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and with that came the customary difficulties: unable to sit still or to show the concentration necessary to complete homework assignments. He was on Ritalin for a couple of years, but came off the medication because he wanted to deal with the problem on his own.
It didn’t help that during his formative years, his parents were not getting on. They divorced when Michael was nine. In the fallout from the break-up, the youngster lived with his mother, Debbie, a teacher, and had limited contact with Fred, his father, who is a state policeman. “It was all just a hard time in Michael’s life,” Debbie once said.
Perhaps he would have survived anyhow, but Phelps was helped by his love of swimming and the fact that he was naturally talented and competitive. Through his mother’s eyes, the sport was a perfect fit for a boy who would not sit still but could swim length after length and never seem to get bored. It was fortunate, too, that when he moved from the Loyola High School pool in Towson, Maryland, to the more prestigious North Baltimore Aquatic Club, he encountered Bowman, who would become his first and, so far, only coach.
Bowman was talented but volatile and had been around swim clubs, as if searching for something he wasn’t destined to find. At first he and Phelps didn’t get on. The kid had an attitude; the coach was a disciplinarian with a low tolerance level for swimmers who answered back. But when things clicked, the early problems became part of what has made their relationship so strong.
Bowman likes to say that he has just been a coach, but the relationship is more than that. With Fred Phelps’s marginal role in his son’s life, it is easy to believe that coach Bowman became part father-figure. What he soon realised was that the kid had extraordinary talent. In the autumn of 1996, a few months after the disappointment of Whitney not being selected for Atlanta, the coach arranged what he said was an important meeting with Michael’s estranged parents.
When coaches come across a gifted young athlete, they are not given to understating the case. Bowman told the Phelpses that their son was a one-off, with a talent so rare that if nurtured properly, it would make him one of the best swimmers in the world. Bowman had had seven coaching jobs, worked in four states, seen hundreds of outstanding young talents, but this one was different.
So exceptional was the 11-year-old that Bowman could foretell the rest: within four years he would be competing with the best in the country and would be judged promising enough to be sent as a spectator to the Sydney Olympics; four years after that, he would make the team for Athens and contend for medals; after that there would be world records.
Bowman got it wrong. Phelps made the US team for Sydney. At 15 years of age, he was the youngest American male swimmer at the Olympics for 68 years. He finished a highly creditable fifth in the 200m butterfly. Six months later, still 15, he broke the world record in the event. Eight years after the coach had predicted that Phelps would compete for medals in Athens, he won six Olympic golds, including four in individual events, the same number that Mark Spitz won in Munich in 1972.
As great athletes inspire us, they also incite our scepticism. How can we not wonder what we’re watching when an Olympic sprinter explodes off the block? In the face of an unbelievable performance, it is now natural to wonder if we can believe it. This is not just athletics and cycling and baseball, it is everywhere. Last week China’s best backstroker, Ouyang Kunpeng, was banned for life after testing positive for the anabolic steroid clenbuterol.
There are good reasons for believing that Phelps is clean. He was almost as good at 15 as he is now, and there has not been a sudden, difficult-to-explain leap in his performance level. That his is a special talent, related to the ease with which he takes to water, is clear from his technical mastery.
“You look at him,” says four-time British Olympian Karen Pickering, “and you see someone who does all the little things so well. His starts, his turns, his work underwater – everything he does is right. And when it’s tight, he knows where the finish is better than his rivals.
“There have been some pretty exceptional swimmers in recent times: Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Aleksandr Popov, Krisztina Egerszegi. Watching them was a joy, but Phelps is different. You have no idea what he is going to do, except that he might obliterate his rivals and knock a second or two off the world record. He’s certainly the greatest I have ever seen.” Perhaps another reason to believe in Phelps is that when his strength is measured out of the water, he scores badly. Physiologists from USA Swimming say he is one of the weakest elite swimmers they have measured. His bench press was poor. Asked to lift weights with his legs, he did not impress. Had he been using substances such as clenbuterol, he would have done far better in such tests.
The dry land of the gymnasium is not his terrain. “He’s fine on land,” the physical therapist Scott Heinlein has said. “He can walk. He can do all the things you want him to do. But he’s not extraordinary in any way. What Michael excels at takes place in water, so what does it tell you to test him on land?”
The sense that he is a phenomenon, not just superior to but different from every other swimmer, is echoed everywhere. “In every walk of life you’ve got your all-time wonders,” says Lenny Krayzelburg, a member of the US team and a four-time Olympic gold medallist, “and Michael is our Einstein, our Newton. He has a chance, before he’s through, to win 25 gold medals at the Olympics."
To get anywhere near that mark, Phelps must continue to survive the US trials in Nebraska. On Friday evening, Lochte went after him in the 200m individual medley, desperate to have his revenge for the opening day’s defeat in the 400m medley. The shorter medley suited Lochte better. To hold him off, Phelps had to swim another world record. Although finishing second to Lochte would still have qualified him in the 200m, Phelps does everything to win every race. When an athlete is perceived to be invincible, it is better for him to continue winning.
It will help that he is level-headed, likable, naturally respectful of his rivals and a fierce competitor who, on the biggest days, seems like the coolest kid on the blocks.
He is asked constantly if he will win eight gold medals in Beijing and surpass the seven golds won by in the pool by Spitz 36 years ago. Sensibly, he says that to win one gold would be a fine achievement and that he just wants to go there and swim his best.
“You wouldn’t bet against him,” says Pickering. “I have never seen him have a wobble, not produce his best on the big occasion. He has the advantage of being American and having great chances of winning gold in the three relays – but then, he is a big part of why the US relay teams will be so hard to beat. He’s got five individual events. Ian Crocker will be tough to beat in the 100m butterfly, Ryan Lochte very tough in the 200m medley, but,” she repeats, “I wouldn’t back them against Michael.”
Spitz, who swam in a less competitive era, was asked what it would be like if Phelps equalled his seven golds. “It would be like the second man on the moon,” he replied, with a well-disguised modesty. And what if Phelps actually got the eight? “First man on Mars,” Spitz replied.
For an athlete who sometimes seems to have come from a different planet, that might be appropriate.
The man from Atlantis
Michael Phelps has used his physical and mental attributes to elevate performance in the pool to a new level
WINGSPAN
At 6ft 7in, Phelps’ wingspan is key to his supreme handling of water and his critical balance when travelling through the water at speed
HANDS
Phelps has large, paddle-like hands for pulling his way through the water, Paul McMullen, a long-time, full-time observer of Phelps since the swimmer’s youth in Baltimore, once wrote: "Physiologists can measure Phelps’s wingspan and quantify his ability to process energy, but the observation that most clearly differentiates Phelps from every other swimmer on earth is this: Phelps can manipulate water like no human since Moses"
FEET AND HIPS
Size 14 feet (size 15 in Australian measures, compared to size 17 for Ian Thorpe) provide powerful propulsion. They combine with powerful hips to make Phelps the most lethal human dolphin in the world
PSYCHOLOGY
Most swimmers would be unable to contemplate a programme of eight events in the Olympics. Phelps gets there by being wedded not to the end result but to the journey he knows will take him there. You have to go one day at a time, one meet at a time, and one practice at a time. Everything is about steps and constantly improving on your own times and achievements”
PHYSIOLOGY
Phelps has an engine that pumps more than 30 litres of blood per minute to his major muscle groups (human average, 15l) He also has a freakish ability to recover quickly. After one of his races, physiologists took a pinprick of his ear to measure his blood lactate level (lactic acid is what causes ''muscle burn'', a sign of the oxygen deficit that causes muscles to shut down). Phelps’s lactate level immediately after racing was 5.0 (5 millimoles per litre of blood). Other swimmers typically produce levels of 10 or 15, or sometimes higher
TORSO
Phelps has broad shoulders, thin hips, a flat backside, a long torso and relatively short legs. The ratio translates to impeccable balance in water and minimal resistance
And if Phelps isn’t the greatest, then what about these four sporting superstars?
The scale of Phelps’s achievements and presence is acknowledged by Britain’s Stephen Parry, who claimed bronze behind him in the 200m butterfly in Athens. ‘Michael is an incredible athlete. He’s a legend. He was a world record holder at 15 years of age in the 200 ’fly back in 2001. That’s phenomenal. You know when you go into a race with someone like that that you’re dealing with extraordinary things outside your control. You line up there, it's an Olympic final and it’s what you've dreamt about all your life. I got excited down the third 50. I was having delusions of grandeur that Phelps was going to die a death and I was going to win the gold medal. It is an astonishing feeling to be so close to someone who is a living legend.’
But there are four other active athletes who have dominated and revolutionised their fields to lay claim to the title of the greatest . . .
TIGER WOODS
The American has won 14 majors, the last in June when he defied a knee injury to win the US Open, leaving him four behind Jack Nicklaus in the all-time list. Woods is one of only five men to have won all four of golf’s majors. Only he and Nicklaus have won each major at least three times. When he won The Masters in April 2001, he became the only golfer in the modern era to hold all four majors at the same time. His long hitting has prompted tournament organisers to lengthen courses on which he regularly competes and he has set the benchmark for his peers in terms of fitness and gym work. Woods’s emergence as possibly the greatest golfer of all time has also brought more sponsors and viewers to the game, leading to a financial windfall from which his rivals have benefited
ROGER FEDERER
Victory on Centre Court today against rival Rafael Nadal would be the crowning achievement of the Swiss player’s career, taking him past Bjorn Borg’s record of five consecutive Wimbledon titles. Those records he holds include most consecutive Grand Slam singles finals (10), from July 2005 to September 2007, and unbeaten runs on grass (65) and hard court (56). When he won the Australian Open in January 2004, he became world No 1, a position he has not relinquished since. A friend of Woods, Federer has so far won 12 Grand Slam titles. The only one missing from his CV is the French Open, where he has been a beaten finalist for the past three years against Nadal. His topspin forehand has been described by John McEnroe as ‘the greatest shot in our sport’
FLOYD MAYWEATHER
Not strictly speaking a current, competitive athlete but only retired last month and his performance in December against Britain's Ricky Hatton, whom he stopped in the 10th round, confirmed his status as The Ring magazine's pound-for-pound best fighter in the world, an honour he was first awarded in 2005 and has held every year since. His career record shows 39 wins and no defeats, with 25 knockouts. Mayweather started as a super featherweight but moved up to lightweight, light welterweight, welterweight and light middleweight and won world titles in all five divisions. His victory over Oscar de la Hoya in 2007 is considered his greatest moment. Showed how nimble he really was when he wowed viewers with his performances on American TV’s Dancing with the Stars
ROMAN SEBRLE
Played football for 13 years before changing to athletics. Since then, he has followed in the footsteps of Daley Thompson and American Dan O'Brien, by winning not only Olympic gold in 2004 (after narrowly missing out on winning four years earlier) but also taking the world decathlon title last year. Sebrle is also the reigning European champion and holds the world record, becoming in 2001 the first decathlete to return more than 9,000 points in the event. He is the only decathlete in history to have finished 40 competitions with more than 8,000 points and 20 with more than 8,500 points. In 2007, he was nearly killed while training in South Africa when a stray javelin pierced his shoulder. In 2008, a panel of experts in the Wall Street Journal voted him the world's greatest athlete.[/q]