Michael Phelps' bold quest for seven - or eight - gold medals is the buxx of this year's Olympics.
By GARY SHELTON
Published August 8, 2004
Michael Phelps didn't have to put up with all of this pressure. Why, he could have been a golfer.
All the laps? All the hours? Hah. Phelps could have knocked his way around thecourse, pitching and putting, waving to the galleries. He could have taken more time and fewer strokes.
There was a time, back when he was a high school freshman, that golf seemed inviting. His favorite teacher was a golf coach, and for a while, just a while, Phelps entertained the notion of chasing Tiger Woods instead of Mark Spitz.
Who knows? If he had tried it, it might have worked out. The world needs more golfers. Shoot, by now, Phelps might have been a 5-handicapper.
Then again, he could have gone in another direction. He could have been a football player.
All the pressure? All the hype? Who needs it? Phelps could have been a quarterback, cutting and running, or maybe a tight end. He could have scored a few touchdowns.
There was a time, when he was a junior, when football called to him. All of his high school buddies were on the team, and the coach would stop him in the hall and promise him a jersey. For a while, just a while, Phelps thought about becoming the next Tom Brady.
Instead, he stayed in the pool.
Turns out, he is up to his neck in greatness.
How good is Michael Phelps? It has become the core question of the Olympics. Phelps will enter the pool with an ambitious, audacious, arrogant, adorable, amazing and, to some, annoying goal of trying to equal (or best) Mark Spitz's seven gold medals from 1972.
Watch him cut through the water, slicing through with this stroke or that, moving as hydrodynamically as something in an aquarium, and it is impossible to imagine Phelps doing anything else. He was not constructed for putting greens or end zones. He is two gills shy of being built for the water.
"He's an aquatic animal," said Bob Bowman, his coach. "He's not a land animal."
If you want to see Bowman double over in laughter, bring up the days when Phelps says he considered leaving the sport. This is funny stuff. Phelps? The kid who has never picked up a weight? Phelps? The kid who has trouble running a quarter of a mile?
"I've tried to make him run every year in the fall," Bowman said. "It always ends the same way: With me having a heart attack because he fell or because he's trying to race somebody and he falls and his ankle hurts. There is always a little something. I finally learned. This year, we didn't make him run.
"He might have been a pretty good golfer. Who knows? As far as a football player, I don't think you would have seen him playing in the Big House."
Said Phelps: "Except for swimming, I'm a little uncoordinated."
Oh, but put Phelps in the water, and you would swear he has gills. He is 6-foot-4 and lean, with a 6-6 wingspan, with flexible shoulders and ankles. Viewed from the side, he is thin and narrow; from the back, he is wide and tapered. He looks very much like a great ray skimming the surface of the ocean.
Phelps also has a competitor's spirit and a gold-miner's greed. He is focused, dedicated and resilient from one race to the next. He has the uncanny ability to be wired physically and relaxed mentally.
"He has all the parts," Bowman said. "Flexibility, strength, endurance. And he's very strong mentally. That part is critical."
Phelps is also driven. He is 19, and he thinks that Olympic medals come in bunches. He will swim as many as eight events (five individual and three relays) in Athens, which means as many as 17 swims in eight days. It would be the most impressive feat of man involving water since Moses split the Red Sea.
"I don't think it's realistic," said Rowdy Gaines, who won three golds in 1984. "I don't think the stars are aligned for it. But if he were to do it, I think it would be the greatest sports feat ever, hands down, no question."
Over the next few weeks, you probably will get your fill of Phelps. In commercials. On magazine covers. On television highlights. In our society, celebrity is not portioned out in small slices.
Yet, before the hype strangles you, grant Phelps this. He is willing to risk falling down for the chance to chase greatness.
Too many athletes play it safe. Too many tread lightly, choosing only their very best events, fearing any effort over their heads. Too many are satisfied with just a taste of success. Phelps could have chosen to swim just the IMs, maybe the 200 butterfly, and he could have had a dandy Olympics. No one, however, would have called Mark Spitz for comment.
Phelps will attempt to take a nation for a ride. Grab a ski rope and hold on.
He is an unusual athlete, Phelps. There are times as he talks you can see the goofy teenager within. At a recent photo shoot with Cindy Crawford for Omega watches, Phelps seemed a little embarrassed as she kissed his cheek. He was, he admitted, eager to call his buddies back home to brag about how Cindy held his hand.
At other times, Phelps seems as packaged as a young Tiger. At times, his lines come across as rehearsed and laundered by his agent or his coach or his adviser. Then he will blurt out something like this: "If I wanted to, I could win 15 gold medals." As he said it, it was possible to feel his handlers blanch. In ensuing news conferences, Phelps did not say it again.
The more packaged Phelps comes across, however, the more it obscures the youth of the swimmer and the size of his quest. For instance: When Gaines won his medals, Phelps had not been born.
"He's 19," Gaines said. "In 1996, we thought Tom Malchow was God's gift because he won one silver medal at 19. This kid wants to win seven golds. There has never been anyone like him.
"It's sort of like LeBron James leading the NBA in scoring, rebounding, free throw percentage, assists, blocked shots and everything else. I can't fathom the stress, physically or mentally."
Yet, if you look at the occasionally slack-jawed Phelps when he is dry, it is sometimes difficult to see greatness.
He is the same kid who chased his older sisters, Hilary and Whitney, around the pool, splashing and playing games. He is the same kid who, at 7, refused to put his face into the water to learn his strokes. He grew up accustomed to the smell of chlorine in the morning.
When Phelps was 11, an assistant coach at the Baltimore Aquatic Club noticed he was a little bigger, a little better than most of the other kids. Bowman had bounced around a little, and he was making in the $30,000-a-year range. Bowman figured he would coach Phelps for a while, then hand him off to another coach, and the two would go their separate ways.
It didn't work out that way. The two turned out to be perfect for each other. Phelps' father and mother divorced when he was 7, and there have been times Phelps was estranged from his father, Fred. Perhaps he found the adult role model that he was looking for in Bowman. And Bowman? He found a diamond in Phelps.
There are times, Bowman said, when he forgets just how young Phelps is. Phelps has a knack for reminding him.
"Sometimes, he does something ... childish," Bowman said. "He just plays around all the time. He can laugh at things that are really inappropriate. Sophomoric humor is his favorite thing. When Tommy Boy is your favorite movie of all time, when you can say every word of it, it says something.
"He listens to this horrendous rap music. He plays video games. He loves to do things to his car, tint the windows darker, that sort of stuff. He loves his stereo system, which could take the roof off this place.He loves to hang out with his friends. If kids ask, he'll pick them up and toss them into the pool.
Oh, he also seems to have an affinity to gold. As in medals. As in rewards.
Already, Phelps is financially secure. And the riches keep rolling in. Omega watches. Speedo swimwear. Power bars. AT&T Wireless. Then there is the bounty: Speedo has offered a $1-million reward if Phelps comes home with seven gold medals.
The reward money raised a few eyebrows across swimming. On the day it was announced, U.S. swim coach Eddie Reese said to his swimmer, Ian Crocker, a rival of Phelps, "Speedo ought to offer you $300,000 if you can keep Phelps from winning seven."
"I guarantee you this is not financially motivated," Bowman said.
Phelps said he is motivated "just to see what I can do." That alone is intriguing. At the Olympic Trials in July, Phelps looked versatile, but he did not look dominant. In Athens, he will have to be both.
"He didn't look rested to me," Gaines said. "In Athens, he'll be more rested, and you'll see a difference in his times."
Perhaps it will help Phelps that he looked beatable at the Trials. He is a swimmer who feeds off his failures. For instance, in his room, he has a photo of Ian Crocker on his wall because of his losses in the butterfly.
"I want to change the sport of swimming," Phelps said. "I want to do for our sport what Michael Jordan did for his."
Can Phelps pull off The Big Splash?
If you are handicapping the field, Phelps is a solid underdog to Crocker in the 100-meter butterfly and a heavy one to Ian Thorpe in the 200-free. If he walks away with four golds and two silvers, the talk will be that he was in over his head all along.
"To the rest of us, six golds is disappointment," Gaines said.
Such is the goal. It is more difficult than a Grand Slam, harder than a Triple Crown. Yes, it is harder than what Spitz accomplished.
For one thing, Spitz was in his second Olympics. He had been a disappointment in '68, and the second time, at 22, he was more aware of the pressures.
This is Phelps' big chance. He will still compete in 2008, Bowman says, but not with a program of this magnitude. It is Phelps' age - and the recovery that goes with it - that makes such a pursuit possible. To win seven golds, Spitz swam 13 times (including heats). Phelps would have to swim 17 times.
"It isn't so much the extra rounds," Bowman said. "It's the level of competition he would face, and the competition in the relays. In '72, if we didn't have a false start, winning the relays was pretty much a guarantee. In our relays, every one will be a dogfight.
"Michael has to beat the best any way they come. And if you do that, you get to be recognized as the best ever."
The best ever. It is safe to say that, had Phelps turned to golf or football, no one would have suggested that of him. In golf, seven is usually a triple-bogey. In football, it's a touchdown.
In swimming, seven is an open lane to immortality.
