ROME — Michael Phelps had another swimsuit issue. It didn’t slow him down this time.
Phelps bounced back from a stunning loss with something more familiar — a world record in the 200-meter butterfly Wednesday. For good measure, he surpassed another of Mark Spitz’s accomplishments with the 34th world record of his career, one more than Spitz had during his brilliant run in the pool.
One night after he was soundly beaten by Germany’s Paul Biedermann, Phelps sliced the time in what he calls his “bread and butter” event to 1 minute, 51.51 seconds, more than a half-second lower than his gold medal-winning time of 1:52.03 at the Beijing Olympics.
With all the hullabaloo over swimsuits, everyone wondered about Phelps’ decision to wear one that stretched only from his waist to his ankles, leaving his upper body bare. Was he trying to make a fashion statement? “No, that didn’t even cross my mind,” Phelps said. “It was just me being comfortable.”
Actually, Phelps had planned to wear a Speedo bodysuit, only to discover during warmups the one he brought to the Foro Italico was too tight in the shoulders. So he went back to the legsuit, which he prefers in the fly anyway.
“He actually warmed up with the full body and he just said it felt too tight and he took it off,” Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman said. “Then I noticed he hadn’t shaved his chest, but I’m like, ‘Don’t worry about it. I don’t think you have much hair.’ ”
Phelps went out much faster than he normally does in the fly, and paid for it on the final push to the wall. His arms were burning. His legs, too. But there was no way he was losing again.
He surged to the wall a body length ahead of silver medalist Pawel Korzeniokski of Poland, with Japan’s Takeshi Matsuda settling for bronze. Phelps whipped around quickly to see his time and held up his right index finger when the “WR” was posted.
“I wanted to step on it in the first 100 to get out there in the clean water, and that’s pretty much what happened,” Phelps said. “It was a lot more pain (Tuesday) night than (Wednesday) night.”
On Tuesday, he was blown out of the water by Biedermann, who routed Phelps in the 200 freestyle and also snatched away his world record.
Shortly after Phelps climbed from the pool, Italy’s Federica Pellegrini sent the home crowd into a frenzy when she set the world mark in the 200 freestyle.
For those who’ve lost count, that’s 22 records over four days in Rome, hardly living up to the label as the Eternal City. Nothing is sacred in these new body suits, which have already helped surpass the 15 records set at the last worlds in Australia two years ago, with four days still to go.
