No Limits (14 page)

Mostly, even before 2001, the buzz had to do over and again
with security concerns. A radical anarchists' group called 17 November, who had assassinated U.S. officials and influential Greeks, had been on the loose for years. Then, of course, came 9/11. Osama bin Laden declared holy war on everything American. The IOC took out insurance against terrorism and other disasters. In the months before the Olympics, most American reporters who were going to be sent to Athens had to go through disaster training taught, in many cases, by former military specialists; the training was heavy on such notions as how to bandage up a wounded arm or leg in case a bomb went off. This was the atmosphere heading into Athens and, for those of us on the American team, there were additional concerns, which the U.S. Olympic Committee made clear in instructing us to be as low-key as possible. We were to avoid at all costs anything that might paint any one of us as ugly Americans.

I certainly wasn't going to do anything stupid. And I certainly felt secure.

“I feel extremely safe, extremely confident,” I said in meeting reporters before the Olympics started. “The USA is doing a great job of supporting us and protecting us, especially the swim team. We wear the red, white, and blue proudly. We wear the stars and stripes.”

I certainly was not going to comment on anything political. I understood that I was now a public figure, and that there might be interest in my take on such things, if I had one. That said, I was nineteen years old, a swimmer focused on swimming.

“Bush or Kerry?” I was asked at a pre-Olympics U.S. swim team training camp in Mallorca, Spain. Who did I prefer in the 2004 U.S. presidential election?

“The objective at hand is swimming,” I said. “That's what I'm worried about right now.”

The sooner the attention shifted to sports, and to swimming, the better.

As it usually does at the Olympics, it did so as soon as the
action got under way at that outdoor pool, enveloped by bleachers that slanted up and away into the sky, decorated by flags from countries near and far that fluttered in the breeze.

The 400 IM took place on a Saturday, the 400 free relay Sunday, the 200 free Monday.

Heading into that 200 free in Athens, then, I was one-for two. The Spitz Watch was at full roar for what was being called the “Race of the Century,” which seemed absurd given that the century's years could still be counted on one hand.

At these Olympics, Bob was one of Eddie Reese's three assistants. Entertaining the press before the 200 free, Bob was asked to equate it with a horse race. He brought up the 1938 classic when Seabiscuit challenged War Admiral. But this was not a match race, he emphasized.

Indeed not.

The first semifinal went to van den Hoogenband. Ian and I went one-two in the other.

Klete Keller was also in the race; he finished second behind me at the Trials and had just two days before won his second straight Olympic bronze in the 400. Hackett was in, too; he'd held the world record in the 200 free for a few months in 1999.

Why, I kept getting asked, did I want into this race?

It's not your best event, I kept getting told. It's the one race in which you're not the favorite. Ian is the world-record holder, Hoogie the defending Olympic champion. Don't you get that?

I heard the murmurs: If you lose this race, it's over; you can't win seven golds at these Olympics.

Don't you understand?

Yes, I understood fully. I wanted to race in this race, against the guys who made up this field. And I especially wanted to race Ian Thorpe, the world-record holder, before either of us was done.

The point of competition is to compete. It's to take on the biggest challenge. When you compete against the very best, it
makes you better; I don't care if someone is twenty times better, or one-tenth better. I want to race the best.

I hate to lose. But I was not afraid to lose. I am never afraid to lose.

There's a dry wind that's peculiar to Greece that's called the
meltemi.
It comes up in the late afternoons and early evenings. As we were called out onto the deck, the flags around the stadium were blowing straight out because of the
meltemi.

I was in Lane 3, Hoogie in 4, Ian in 5.

There were cheers for me when I was introduced. There were more cheers for Hoogie. The cheers for Ian were deafening.

At the 50 wall, I was in fourth. No surprise there. Hoogie was under world-record pace. By the 100 wall, I had moved into third. We stayed in that order through the third wall: Hoogie, Ian, me. At the 150 wall, though, Ian came off the turn like a rocket. He overtook Hoogie and drove to the finish. I came on hard and, over that last 50, threw down the fastest last split in the pool. I made up more than a second on Hoogie, and touched in 1:45.32, an American record and a time that would have won gold at every prior Olympic Games, even in Sydney just four years before.

Here it was good for third. I was still third.

Hoogie touched nine-hundredths ahead of me, in 1:45.23. He got second.

Ian was first, in 1:44.71, an Olympic record. As he touched, he ripped off his yellow cap, squinted at the board, saw the number “1” next to his name, pumped his right fist and yelled, “Yeah! Whoo!” He and Hoogie exchanged a handshake over the lane line, and a hug, and Ian, leaning in so Pieter could hear over the crowd noise, said, “Well, I guess that makes it one-all and I'd like to see you again in Beijing.”

Later, talking to the press, Hoogie said, “I gave my best but Thorpe was better. He is the man in this distance. To be beaten by one of the best in my sport, well, that's the way it is.”

Ian said, “You know, people kind of have their fate and their destiny and, you know, that was what it was tonight. I've worked damn hard for this. I've worked hard for all of my swims and, you know, it just happened for me tonight.”

“Just the fact that Phelps wanted to step up and race Ian Thorpe, even though this isn't his best event, it's a testament to what kind of athlete he is,” one of the television commentators said just moments after the finish. The commentator: Dara Torres, who was taking part in these Olympics from the broadcasting booth.

That effort in Athens was, at the time, the fastest I could go. I had made mistakes: My turns could have been so much better, particularly my third turn, which just killed me. Even so, I was closing fast and if the race had been 205 or 210 meters, I might have pulled it out. But it wasn't, of course, and so I didn't. I ran out of pool; that's the saying in swimming, and that's what happened.

But, I can see now, it's all part of how the puzzle was supposed to come together.

That loss in Athens has to be looked at as a—maybe
the
—defining moment in my swim career. I stepped up and raced the best. I found out I was good but, in the 200 free, not good enough. I had work to do. I was proud to stand on the podium with Pieter and Ian, with Ian in particular—it's competitive, never personal—but at the same time I felt immense resolve.

During the ceremony, as the gold medal was draped around his neck, I applauded in genuine respect, and I made sure afterward, in speaking with reporters, to praise him. “In my opinion, he has a perfect stroke,” I said. “It's unbelievable how he moves through the water. It's pretty to watch.”

He, in turn, said nice things about me: “Michael had a good race.” But he also said, when asked, that seven golds might be too much for anyone. “It is a very difficult thing to do. I think people probably don't understand what goes on behind the scenes.”

Spitz Watch was over, at least for 2004. I had tried to do something bold. I didn't quite get there, at least in Athens. But isn't the trying the thing that matters? I was taught to dream big. If you don't, don't you fall back?

When I was told, well after the Games, what was being said about me then, after I had won one gold medal and two bronzes, it was fascinating to learn that in some quarters I could be seen as a disappointment.

“Although Phelps could still win six gold medals in Athens,” the Associated Press reported, “his audacious challenge fell short and could result in him being remembered as something of a failure at the Athens Games…”

I knew I was not a failure in any way, and so did those close to me. It doesn't matter if you fall short; it is never a failure to go after your goals with everything you've got. “‘Will it crush him?' ‘No,'” my mom said in that same AP story. “‘He's already got a page in the history book.'”

•   •   •

To anyone who would listen in 2004, Bob would say, remember, Michael is only nineteen. We don't know how good he is yet. We're going to try to do whatever we can to get him to deliver his best performances. That's all I can do and that's all he can do.

After the 200 free in Athens, I could still win eight medals at those 2004 Games but only five more golds, which, as it turned out, I did. When those Olympics were over, I had become the second athlete in Olympic history to win eight total medals at a single Games; a gymnast from the Soviet Union, Alexander Ditiatin, won eight at the 1980 Games in Moscow.

That was immensely gratifying, of course. People would ask me, is it a disappointment not to win seven golds? I would say, I won eight medals, how is that a disappointment?

At the same time, I had a new measuring stick: that 200 free. I didn't yet know how good I could be. There was obviously more
to do to get me to deliver my best. Between Athens and Beijing, as Bob and I mapped out the plan to get to 2008, we had three major meets that would test how far I could come: the 2005 world championships in Montreal; the 2006 Pan Pacs, again in Canada, this time out west, in Victoria; and the 2007 world championships in Melbourne.

I fully expected to get better. After Athens, as I grew into my twenties, I was bound to get bigger and stronger. In Ann Arbor, Bob could call on Jon's expertise as well; though Jon was formally stepping aside as Michigan's head coach, he was still going to be very much around. Jon knew a few things about how to get the world's best swimmers ready for the biggest meets, including the Olympics, where he had been an assistant coach at multiple editions of the Games.

Both Ian and Hoogie passed on the 2005 Worlds in Montreal, Ian saying he was taking the year off, Pieter recovering from back surgery. I won the 200 free there in 1:45.20, a personal best and a tenth of a second lower than the American record I had set in Athens. Hackett finished second, nearly a second behind. Halfway through the race, I was steaming along, ahead of Ian's world-record pace. But my last turn was still off. And then it was obvious, coming down the last 50, I was not in the most optimal condition. It was clear to Bob, and to me, that I had taken a major withdrawal from the account in Athens, and now needed to make significant deposits.

The most puzzling thing about that 200 final in Montreal is that it came two days after a disastrous 400 free prelim; I finished eighteenth of fifty-seven swimmers, and failed for the first time in years to advance to the final. In my 400 prelim, I had been third in my heat at the turn, then faded to seventh. Looking at the scoreboard, I couldn't believe it. I still can't. I am at a loss to explain why it happened. It just did.

It was a lesson I would rather not have been reminded of, that
racing at a world-class level takes everything you've got, and you have to bring it each and every day. But I got reminded. I would be reminded of that time and again in Montreal, particularly later in that meet, in the 100 fly.

Every day thereafter, at the pool or in the weight room in Ann Arbor, I felt the sting. My response to that, the work that losing would spur me to put in, that was something I could control. Ian Thorpe's willingness to keep swimming: that I had no control over.

The work I was putting in jumped to a new level. Everything I accomplished in the pool leading up to and through Athens had been done without my doing any serious weightlifting. When I was growing, Bob had been particularly worried that weight work might do more harm than good, might well lead to serious injury. There was good reason for that, I am double-jointed in my knees, my ankles, and my elbows. I was, especially as a teenager, awkward out of the pool. Clumsy, even. Bob finally ordered me to stop jogging because I couldn't even do that without running the risk of tripping over my own feet.

After 2005, both of us understood the time had come. Yes, I had speed in the pool, but that was mostly because I could hold a steady pace over whatever distance was demanded. Now, I needed to build more sprint speed. One sure way would be producing ferocious drive off the wall in my turns. To do that, my legs needed to get much stronger.

I went from having never lifted so much as a barbell in my life to grueling workouts in the weight room three days a week, the weight work typically following two hours in the pool.

Because so much of the motion that's visible in the pool is with the arms, it's easy for most people in the stands or watching on television to think that swimming is all about the arms. Olympic swimming, like all long-course racing, is all in the legs.

Eight Olympic medals, six gold, and, when I started doing the
box squat at Michigan, one of the most basic of strength-building exercises for the legs, I was lucky to be able to max out one rep at 300 pounds. I worked up to twenty.

To my disappointment, Ian did not show in Victoria, at the 2006 Pan Pacs. Word was he was living in Los Angeles. It was unclear to some whether swimming still motivated him.

With Ian out, I opted in Victoria not to swim the 200 free, pouring myself instead into the 200 fly (world record); that 400 relay with Neil, Cullen, and Jason (world record); and the 200 IM (world record). After no such records for almost two years, I suddenly had three.

The Pan Pacs were in August. That fall, I was at the condo I'd bought in Ann Arbor, just hanging around amid practices, messing around on the computer, and watching television, when I got a text message from a friend. It said, “Thorpe just retired.” My first reaction was, no way. My second was, no way that could be true.