No Limits (22 page)

•   •   •

After those Games, of course, Crock and Krayzelburg and I crisscrossed the country on our tour. We were with each other twenty-four hours a day for several weeks. Crock opened up and we had a good time in each other's company. A documentary film,
Unfiltered,
shot in the months between Athens and the 2005 Worlds in Montreal, chronicled it all.

When the tour ended, Crock got back to serious training. Me? I endured the ferocious anxiety of my back problems, got arrested for drinking and driving, moved to Ann Arbor, and had to learn how to live life away from home. Other distractions abounded as well. I made the rounds of various talk shows. I judged a beauty pageant.

At the 2005 Worlds in Montreal, Crock thrashed me in the 100 fly. Absolutely dominated. He not only beat me by more than a second, he lowered the world record—his—to 50.4.

When I saw Bob afterward, I said, “I want to put a bag over my head.”

He looked at me and said, “Me, too.”

Immediately after those Worlds, I was off to China, on a promotional tour arranged by some of my sponsors. Finally, in September, Bob had had enough.

“Michael,” he said, “what is it you want to do? What are we doing here?”

“I want to swim all my events,” I said. “And I want to win.”

“You know what needs to happen?”

“I know.”

I did, in fact, know. I just needed to hear myself say it.

The 2007 worlds in Melbourne were not all that far away, in late March of that year, after a long Australian summer. I knew what needed to happen.

In all of 2006, Crock and I went head to head only once, at the summer nationals. I won, touching in 51.51, Crock in 51.73. The nationals served as the qualifier for the Pan Pacs; I passed in Victoria on the 100 fly, Crock going on to an easy win, 51.47, in the finals.

The 100 fly final at the 2007 Worlds took place on a Saturday night. By the time we stepped onto the blocks, I had already won five golds at the meet. This race could be six. The 400 IM, seven. The medley relay, eight. Crock got to the turn first, with me third. We tore for the final wall and, again, I caught him at the end, if just barely, touching in 50.77, Crock in 50.82.

Five-hundredths of a second.

In Athens, I'd won by four-hundredths.

“Knowing that he's having the meet of his life, I expected him to go very fast and he did,” Crock said afterward. “I'm just glad I still hold the world record.”

“That's how I won the Olympic medal,” I told the reporters. “You have to nail the finish as best you can.”

The very next morning, Sunday, April 1, brought the medley relay prelims. Crock, as the silver medalist in the 100 fly, was up third on the blocks for the butterfly leg, swimming with Lochte, Scott Usher, and Neil Walker. Those guys put up what would have been the fastest time overall by more than two seconds. Except, on the board next to United States, it said DSQ. Disqualified. Crock had left the starting block too soon.

The rules allow a relay swimmer the leeway to start three-hundredths of a second early. Crock, according to the timing device, had gone off four-hundredths before Neil touched, meaning his feet had left the blocks one-hundredth of a second too fast. When the judges ruled against him, Crock slapped his hands to his face in disbelief.

A few hours later, he stood up at a team meeting in our hotel and apologized. I didn't mean it, he said. I feel horrible. He kept talking about how bad he felt.

I knew Crock didn't purposely false-start. It was a mistake; people make mistakes. There was nothing I could do. It happened. I could win seven medals in Melbourne, not eight. Crock apologized. It was over.

At least from my perspective, it was.

But as 2007 rolled into 2008, Crock didn't seem himself.

At the U.S. nationals in Indianapolis in the summer of 2007, Crock false-started again, in the 100 fly; I ended up winning the event. A photographic strobe had mistakenly been fired after the “take your mark” command but before the beep; Crock flinched.

In Omaha, in the prelims of the 100 free, Crock false-started yet again.

It wasn't only that I won the 100 fly at the Trials, Crock coming in second. It's that I beat him by 73-hundredths of a second. He wasn't, for whatever reason, himself. In the prelims in Beijing, he inexplicably wore a jammer, a suit that runs from the waist to just above the knees; his time was so poor he almost didn't make the semifinals. He switched back to a legsuit for the semifinals and swam much faster, tied for the third-best time with Lauterstein, the Australian.

You could tell when Crock was on and when he was not, and I wanted him on. When he was on, he had speed, he had tempo. I like racing people at their best, and I knew that through the Trials and even into the prelims and semis of the Games he was not at his best.

Then again, he might have that one special race still left in him.

•   •   •

And then there was Cavic, Milorad on the scoreboard, Mike to all of us who had known him for years, a guy who had been born in Southern California, went to high school there, then to college at
Berkeley. Cavic had been training in South Florida with Mike Bottom, who used to be the coach at Cal and had proven himself time and again as one of the best anywhere at developing sprinters; Bottom was in Florida with a bunch of guys—Gary Hall, Jr., Nathan Adrian, and others—that was called “The Race Club.”

At the Olympics, Cavic was swimming for Serbia in part because he could. Each country gets two entrants per event. To qualify at the U.S. Trials in the 100 fly, Cavic would have had to have gotten by me, Crocker, Stovall, Tarwater, and others.

Not to say that he didn't have talent. Cavic had ability. He finished sixth in the 100 fly in Melbourne, for instance. In Beijing, he had put up the sixth-fastest time in the prelims of the 100 free, proving he was on his game, then scratched out of the semifinal to concentrate on the 100 fly.

Before 2008, though, Cavic had never shown that he was a breakthrough talent on the Olympic stage. His Olympic run in Athens had ended in the semifinals of the 100 fly when water had flooded the inside of his racing suit. After that, he dealt with back problems, even taking several months off in 2006.

He did, however, have a talent for getting noticed.

In the prelims at big meets, the fastest swimmers are seeded into the last three heats. The early heats, and at a meet like the 2007 worlds there are sixteen heats, are for swimmers who are expected to go much slower. In heat number one of the sixteen 100 fly heats in Melbourne, however, there was Cavic; the start list didn't show a qualifying time next to his name. The only two others due to swim in that heat were a guy from Ghana and another from Malaysia. And then the guy from Ghana didn't go. So, Cavic essentially had open water, which is always an advantage. The three fastest times from all 16 heats in those prelims: Crocker, 51.44; Cavic, 51.7; me, 51.95.

At the European swimming championships in March 2008, Cavic was suspended for wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed, in the Serbian language, “Kosovo is Serbia,” as he was awarded his gold
medal for winning the 50-meter butterfly. After that, he went to Belgrade, where he was greeted by hundreds of fans and met with the prime minister, who called him a “hero.”

Because of that suspension, Cavic didn't get to swim the 100 fly at the European championships. Thus he came to Beijing slightly under the radar.

After setting the top time in the semifinals in Beijing, Cavic did not simply allow the time to speak for itself. Instead, he said:

“I've got nothing against Michael Phelps. The guy's the king. Do I want to make a rivalry of this? Of course. Why not?”

And: “It would be kind of nice that one day, historically, we'll speak of Michael Phelps maybe winning seven gold medals, and having lost an opportunity to win eight gold medals. When they talk about that, they'll talk about whoever that guy is that took it away from him. I'd love to be that guy.

“I think it'd be good for the sport, and it'd be good for him if he lost once. Just once.

“Let's be honest about that. It's true. It's good to lose sometimes. I know because I've lost a lot. For him, what would it mean? I would hope that he would cut down on his events for the next year and start training more for the 100 fly. There's no doubt in my mind that he's the best. Will he be the best here? I don't know. He's got a lot on his plate. Hopefully, that will work out for me.”

Gary Hall, Jr.—the same Gary Hall, Jr., who made so much noise in 2004 about me being on the relay—predicted in the
Los Angeles Times
that Cavic would beat me. After training with Cavic at The Race Club for a year and a half, Gary said, Cavic had “worked harder than anyone,” had “endured taunt and torment from his teammates, myself included, for being overzealous with his training,” adding, “We caught him sneaking in extra workouts.”

Gary also said in that article that Cavic had “matured a lot, had somehow mellowed in the right ways and matured in others,” had
“become something of a champion and a team leader,” adding, “He never faltered.”

Gary closed his piece by recounting a toast he had made in Cavic's honor: “‘Here's to the guy that is going to upset Michael Phelps in the 100-meter butterfly,' I said, handing him his Race Club–embroidered terry cloth robe at the team dinner at the end of the season before heading off to the Olympic Trials.

“It looks like for once I might be right.”

During the heats, Cavic made a shooting motion, as though his hand were a gun. He was asked if he had been “shooting” at me over in the next lane. “That's ridiculous,” he said. “If you were there, you would have seen I was firing above him, at my manager.”

I had no idea at the time that any of this was going on. I didn't know the first thing about it until, at breakfast the morning of the final, Bob said to me, hey, Cavic says it would be good for swimming if you got beat and he'd love to be the guy who took the gold medal away from you.

I perked right up. What?!

•   •   •

We walked out onto the deck with the Water Cube roaring with noise. In the stands, just up off the blocks, my mom sat between my sisters, Hilary on her right, Whitney on her left. They were holding hands, tense.

I was in Lane 5, Crocker 6, Cavic 4. As I went through my pre-race routine, stretching, I turned in Cavic's direction; he was turned to face me. It looked to a lot of people, including Bob, as if he was trying to stare me down, which, later, Cavic denied, saying of me, “Maybe he was able to see to see the reflection of himself and he's like, ‘Hey, I look pretty good.' I saw myself in his reflection and was keeping things under control.”

Bob absolutely, positively thought Cavic was trying to play
mind games with me. I had no idea. I saw him looking in my direction, and looked away. I was looking out through my metallic goggles in his direction, but not at him. I was paying no attention to what he was doing. Why would I? Bob had always instilled in me this notion: What does Tiger Woods do? What did Michael Jordan do? The great champions—there's nobody on their level, he used to tell me, and so when they're competing they're competing against themselves, and only themselves. You hear Woods talk after a great round, Bob would say, and what does he say? Something like, “I had good control of my game today,” or, “I managed the last five holes really well.” Never anything like, “Gee, I was really worried whether I was going to beat Vijay, or Ernie, or Phil.” You be like that, Michael, Bob would say.

The goal in this Olympic final that Bob and I had sketched out was for me to turn at 50 meters at 23-point-something seconds. If you turn at 24.2, Bob said, you're dead. At 24-flat, he made plain, well, you'd be making it very difficult on yourself but you might still have a chance.

My goal sheet for this race had me finishing at 49.5. No one had ever gone under 50 seconds. Crock's world record had been at 50.4 since 2005.

The goal sheet, it turned out, was perhaps too aggressive. Everything else about this race, though, was unbelievable.

“Take your marks,” the big voice boomed out over the Cube.

Beep!

The dive. The underwater. Just as I had visualized it.

I popped up and launched into the fly. Fluid, strong, easy. Cavic, I knew, would be going out faster than I was. Crocker, too. I wasn't particularly worried. They had their style, going out harder on the front half; I had mine.

Hilary couldn't stand it any longer. She stood up on her chair. Behind her was a woman from Holland; the Dutch woman kept pulling at her shirt and yelling, “Sit down! Sit down!” Hilary
turned and yelled back “I'm watching my brother and I'm going to stand. He's a good swimmer and you're going to have to tackle me if you want me to sit down!”

Bob, over on the other side of the stands, was imploring me to go faster: “Come on! Come on!”

At 50, I wanted to be half a body length back. I looked at the turn and saw Crocker and thought, okay, Cavic's not too far ahead.

What I didn't know was that I was seventh at the turn, in 24.04.

Cavic had turned first, at 23.42; Crock was right behind him, at 23.7.

Halfway down the backstretch, as I passed Crock to my right, I moved up on Cavic, to my left.

The Dutch woman was still pulling on Hilary's shirt: “Sit down!” Mom was fretting out loud, talking to Hilary, to Whitney, to no one and everyone, hoping against hope that what she was saying wasn't really going to come true, that just saying it might make it not happen: “He's going to get second. He's going to get second.”

With 15 to go, Cavic knew I was coming hard. He said later he saw “kind of a shadow by the side of my goggle,” adding, “The last 15 meters, the last eight meters, I just put my head down. I did not breathe the last eight meters. I was just hoping for the best.”

In the coach's box, Bob was swaying like he was at a church service. Left, right, left, right.