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BEIJING—Michael Phelps spends his days at the Olympics
wolfing down pizza and pasta, dodging text messages from
friends and climbing to the top of the all-time winners’
list.
Phelps
won swimming’s 200-meter freestyle Tuesday for his third
gold medal of the Beijing Games and the ninth of his
career. That total put his name in the record books with
four others—Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, Paavo Nurmi and
Larissa Latynina.
He may
be all alone at the top within 24 hours.
Phelps
has one and probably two finals Wednesday—in the 200
butterfly, where he has held the world record since
March 2001 and qualified with an Olympic record today,
and the 800 freestyle relay, with heats scheduled
tonight. A sweep would give him five gold medals for
Beijing and a total of 11, as well as keep him on course
to break Spitz’s single-Games mark of seven, set in
1972.
“I’m not
even halfway done yet,” the 23-year-old American said at
a news conference. “The most important ones are coming
up. Tomorrow is a pretty big morning.”
Phelps
won his third gold medal with his third world record,
finishing in 1 minute, 42.96 seconds to chop nine-tenths
of a second off his old mark.
“It’s
incredible what he does, it really is,” Peter Vanderkaay,
the bronze medalist and a teammate of Phelps at Olympic
and club level, told reporters. “Incredible.”
Phelps
is entered in five individual and three relay events in
Beijing, comprising a maximum of 17 races in nine days.
He gets a bit of rest by sitting out some relay
heats—what he calls “recovery periods”—and keeps his
energy up with trips to the cafeteria in the Olympic
Village.
“Eating
a lot of pasta and pizza, a lot of carbs,” he said. “And
I sleep as much as I can.”
A lover
of the afternoon nap, Phelps said his rest has been
disturbed by family members and friends texting him
after his gold-medal finals, which are run in the
morning in Beijing to accommodate prime-time television
back in the US.
“They
keep sending messages like, ‘I can’t sleep, I’m so
excited. How can you nap?”‘ Phelps said. “I’d send back
‘Well, I’m not napping if you’re texting me.’”
Vanderkaay has said that at Club Wolverine in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, he sometimes beats Phelps in practice swims.
At the Water Cube pool today, no one was beating the man
known as MP.
Phelps
dove into the water in Lane 6, third from the end after
qualifying fourth last night, and was ahead by the time
he surfaced. He led at every 50-meter split,
progressively driving the world-record time lower, and
won by 1.89 seconds.
‘Open
water’
“I
wanted to try and get into open water, and I was in the
outside lane, so it was kind of difficult for the others
to see me,” Phelps told reporters. “I just wanted to get
out there and try to hold on.”
Park Tae
Hwan of South Korea, the 400 freestyle gold medalist,
was second. Vanderkaay was 2.18 seconds behind the
champion.
“Phelps
has such a tremendous kick,” Park said through an
interpreter at a news conference. “I must copy him. But
I don’t think I can be as good as Phelps.”
The 200
freestyle was the one individual race Phelps lost four
years ago in Athens, where he took six golds. He
finished third that time, behind Ian Thorpe of Australia
and Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands. They
were the two fastest in the world and Phelps said he
wanted to race them to say he went against the best.
On that
night in Greece, Phelps did more than just show up. He
swam what might have been his best technical race of the
Olympics, with poor turns—kickouts, as they’re
called—keeping him from capturing the gold, according to
Bob Bowman, his long-time coach.
“I hate
to lose,” Phelps said. “It motivates me to swim faster.
Over the past four years, I’ve been able to make some
improvements in the 200 free. My kickouts are all I can
ask for.”
There
have been no technical glitches in Beijing.
Phelps
chopped 1.41 seconds off his world record in winning the
400 individual medley two days ago, and set an American
record in the first leg of the 400 freestyle relay
yesterday, a race won on a last-stroke lunge by US
anchor swimmer Jason Lezak. The Americans lowered the
relay world record by almost four seconds.
Phelps
cried on the medal stand after the medley and let out a
scream when Lezak touched first in the relay. Today,
there was no outward emotion as the Baltimore native
scanned the scoreboard after the race and later listened
to “The Star-Spangled Banner” played again.
He
embraced his tearful sister in the stands as he left the
pool deck with yet another gold medal that put him on an
elite list.
“To be
tied for the most Olympic golds with those names, it’s a
pretty amazing accomplishment,” Phelps said. “It’s
definitely an honor.” |
