LONDON — Golden boy Michael Phelps seems happier these days. He seems more like the gangly teenager whose Olympic journey began 12 years ago in Sydney than the man whose record-shattering career is expected to end during the London Games at the Aquatics Centre.
“This is closure,” Phelps said during a packed news conference at Olympic Park. “This is the last competitive meet I’m going to have in my career. I’m going to have a lot of firsts and a lot of lasts this week.”
Then the kid in Phelps added, “Now it’s just a matter of how many toppings I want on my sundae.”
Most already know the answer: three. With 16 medals — 14 of them gold — Phelps is on the verge of becoming the most decorated Olympian in history. He needs three medals to pass Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, who won 18 medals.
“You guys are the ones that keep bringing up the medal count,” Phelps said. “I have never once in my career brought up medal counts.”
Phelps, 27, will start off the Games on Saturday against rival Ryan Lochte in the day’s biggest event — the 400-meter individual medley. It is the decathlon of swimming, with competitors swimming each of the four strokes. Phelps, who is scheduled to swim seven events, had said he wouldn’t try to do the grueling medley again. But over the past year his training taught him otherwise.
“It’s hard to compare myself now to then,” Phelps said of Beijing, when he became the first swimmer to win eight Olympic races. “Going into Beijing we were trying to conquer everything. I have only dropped one event, but we have been a lot more relaxed for the last four years and we are having fun.”
Despite an ambitious program that includes three relays, Phelps sounded as if he is trying to soak up the atmosphere as much as possible, absorbing the final, emotional moments of a career that has made Phelps perhaps the greatest Olympian ever. It’s not something he’d say, not with a week’s worth of racing ahead. But before his first race, many sense Phelps will be the greatest by the time these Games end.
