Melbourne, Australia – The red line lapped at Michael Phelps’ feet, as if pushing him to another world record.
A superimposed TV gizmo that demonstrates just how close swimmers are to record pace, the red line was actually moving along behind Phelps as he approached the wall.
He wasn’t chasing the mark. It was chasing him.
“That was amazing,” said Phelps’ coach, Bob Bowman.
At this point, Phelps is just racing himself and the records he already holds. On Wednesday at the world swimming championships, he set his second world mark in two days and showed no signs of slowing down with five more races to go.
“That’s basically what he always does,” Bowman said. “That’s how you improve the best.”
Can this be right? Phelps swam the 200-meter butterfly in 1 minute, 52.09 seconds. In a sport where records are documented in hundredths of a second, Phelps broke his own record by a staggering 1.62 seconds – the biggest drop in the record since 1959.
For those who thought the lanky American was at his peak during the 2003 worlds in Barcelona or the following year for the Athens Olympics, think again: He’s better than ever, at the ripe old age of 21.
Phelps shattered the record he set just six weeks ago in Missouri. With the crowd at Rod Laver Arena rooting him on, he surged to the wall nearly two body lengths ahead of anyone else.
Whirling around and flipping up his goggles to get a better look at the scoreboard, Phelps squinted his eyes when the time flashed.
“I shocked myself,” Phelps said. “I heard the crowd the last 50 (meters). I didn’t know how close I was or how far I was under it. You could tell by the expression on my face. I was shocked.”
In the stands, Bowman had a similar reaction. He was keeping up with the split times, fully aware Phelps was well below the pace of his previous record-breaking swim.
But Bowman didn’t truly grasp just how fast his star pupil was going until he glanced at the video board on the final lap.
The red line told it all.
“That was,” Bowman said, struggling to find the right word, “interesting.”
For Phelps, it seems like he’s a kid again, breaking personal bests – world records – in seconds, not fractions of a second.
“I feel like I’m 12 years old, being able to drop more that a second off my best time,” he said. “I feel like an age-group swimmer again.”
Phelps can be downright boring when he speaks, rambling on about split times and underwater techniques.
But it’s that singular focus that makes him the champion that he is. He gets up every morning thinking about the next swim, not the last one. Then, he blows everyone away.
“When I go into a race, I swim my own race,” he said. “I definitely do have competitors. I do have people that I want to race, people I want to beat. But when I get in the water, I’m trying to do a best time. I have to swim my own race to do a best time. I can’t swim with someone else.”
No worries, Michael. No one can swim with you.
Just one day earlier, Phelps took down a swimming icon by beating Ian Thorpe’s 6-year-old record in the 200 free – in Thorpe’s home country, no less.
“He’s incredible,” American teammate Katie Hoff said. “He’s just really in his prime right now. He’s just doing some amazing things.”
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