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The face of immense expectations
Michael Phelps at a training session Saturday in Singapore where the U.S. swim team is based for a training camp prior to software replace face in video the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
(Wong Maye-E/AP)
By Vahe Gregorian
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/03/2008
Michael doll face Phelps was nurtured as a child by his swimming coach. At 19, a 'deer in the headlights,' he won six gold medals. Now he is poised to challenge Mark Spitz's Olympic record of seven golds.
* * * * * *
Soon after 7-year-old Michael Phelps' parents plopped him into a pool to channel his hyperactivity, they split up. So soon after Bob Bowman called them together to tell them their son was a phenomenon waiting to happen, he became something more than merely Phelps' coach at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club.
As Phelps readied for his first school dance at about age 13, Bowman recalled not only "actually (letting) him out of practice about 15 minutes early" cowboy smiley face but also amending a sartorial blunder.
"When I went to put on (his) tie, he had buttoned up the shirt one off," Bowman said, smiling. "I had to correct all that."
Then there were the driving lessons, in Bowman's stick shift.
"I always had trouble getting into first gear, especially on hills," Phelps said, remembering the awkward feeling of stalling on an incline on the way to school with "tons of people behind me."
Perhaps as much as the unfathomable arc of Phelps' emergence as shoes in face videos a swimmer, those moments are the reason Bowman keeps on his desk a picture of a 15-year-old Phelps, taken minutes after he qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
"If you can see the look on his face, it is just so purely the man without a face happy," Bowman said, with Phelps
alongside, after last month's U.S. Olympic swimming trials in Omaha, Neb.
As he began to add, "Every time I'm frustrated or discouraged …" a smiling Phelps interrupted and said, "Which is never."
Not exactly, even Phelps would acknowledge. But Bowman clings to the image for a reason — a baseline in the face of immense expectations.
PASSING THE BATON
For all the perspective that picture holds for Bowman and perhaps Phelps, too, what's within it has morphed, exponentially, beyond what cat face painting Bowman could rationally have expected even as he anticipated a prodigy.
What's within potentially is the face of the Beijing Olympics, or, bad haircut for round face as swimming icon Mark Spitz put it, NBC's "meal ticket.''
After winning six gold medals among eight overall at the 2004 Athens Games, Phelps, 23, is on trajectory once more to eclipse Spitz's record seven gold medals in the 1972 girls north face jacket Munich Olympics — a record so ludicrous it once was seen as one of sports' unattainable plateaus.
Even Spitz, who broke seven world records along the way, seems ready to relinquish the record to Phelps, who holds world records in four of the five individual events he will swim and also will compete in three felicity fey face relays.
"I think it is about time someone else takes the responsibility, and I am happy to pass the baton on to someone I know that I am sure that I inspired," Spitz said in Omaha. "There is nothing bad about that; it is only positive. So in one sense, I'm saying to myself, 'Hey, it's OK. Records are made to be broken, even mine.'"
Spitz also seems to believe that among Phelps' experience, technique, physique and insatiable work ethic he is destined to make it happen, especially since he believes Phelps' performance in Omaha was without adequate rest.
"I would expect (in Beijing) that you are going to see him win by margins and set times that have never been done before," he said. "And he'll be unbelievable."
Perhaps. But plenty can go wrong when perfection is the standard.
"I jane seymour face cream hope he does it, but I think the odds are against him," said Matt Biondi, also speaking in Omaha, who won five golds and seven overall in the 1988 Seoul Games. "There are always upsets in sports, and my guess is there's going to be an upset in Beijing."
GAINING MOMENTUM
As optimistic as Spitz is on Phelps' behalf, he also shared an illuminating view of factors that could ease and clog Phelps' way to history, starting with the beginning.
Obviously, Phelps can't win eight without winning his first, the 400 individual medley. Win the first and Phelps will be grounded, gaining energy despite the race's arduous nature and radiating further confidence knowing that he trained and tapered properly.
Moreover, he already will be attacking the psyche of his next competitors, each of whom likely must think like teammate Ryan Lochte.
"Beating him basically requires setting a world record," said Lochte, who, in fact, went under world-record face down tabs time, only untouchable face ani difranco lyrics meaning to lose to Phelps in the 400 IM in Omaha.
Take that mindset and compound it by Phelps winning his first few golds, and he becomes an emotional juggernaut for opponents. The notion of "any given day" is rendered meaningless.
"You not only do your best time and break his old world record — you are still looking at his feet," Spitz said. "I think that is a little demoralizing."
Perhaps especially so for opponents who swim in few events and are left waiting to take on Phelps, wondering, said Spitz, if they are rested properly and ready.
"It makes it really difficult for his competitors to think they can stop this momentum," Spitz said.
Spitz and Bowman also point to Phelps' experience as a crucial advantage, noting Phelps will swim the same face book game routine that he did in Athens, where best chemical peel for face Phelps considered himself a "deer in the headlights" with no rehearsal on as vast a stage.
The program should help minimize, if not neutralize, one of Phelps' few vulnerabilities: when "something has upset the routine," Bowman said. Phelps, who calls himself "a creature of habit," has a knack for emptying his head of face break outs in early pregnancy all distraction despite his attention-deficit issues.
"It's just easy for me to do," he said. "I don't know why."
Those worlds could collide during relays, where Phelps is among excellent teammates but can only contribute and control so much. And, adds Spitz, "There's always that risk of someone false-starting, or the team that tries to get them in the finals doesn't get there." Or, Spitz noted, Phelps' schedule might preclude him from swimming in a relay preliminary, and that relay team might not reach the final.
And those are just the known unknowns.
Spitz recalled that it was "scary" that "so many things had to go right with my story (to happen) … and (that) there is something that had to go wrong with someone else."
UNCANNY RESOLVE
Among the variables Phelps can control, perhaps the two greatest challenges will be how he copes with the exhaustion of all the warming up, preliminary swims, semifinals and finals entailed in eight events and how he withstands the pressure.
In each case, Phelps has demonstrated uncanny resolve in the past.
"As the stage gets bigger," USA Swimming head coach Mark Schubert said, "his performances get better."
From Spitz's viewpoint, which he acknowledges is from afar, Phelps has the same mental fortitude he had to gain strength from each stride, not feel encumbered the closer he gets.
"Every race I won … " he said, "I really felt like they were taking bricks off of my back and the load was getting easier."
Although Phelps is careful never to cosmetic surgeons specializing in face directly proclaim that eight gold medals is his goal, a danger of all the focus on it is that he could win seven or, ho-hum, another six and have it seem he under-achieved. Spitz, for one, condemns that thinking.
"If he doesn't do it, then it was meant not to be," he said, "and that does not take away from his greatness."
Nor from the picture Bowman keeps on his desk, reminding him of where this all began, with a boy just trying to find his way out of first gear.
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CHASING SPITZ
Michael Phelps day of the dead face paints will try again to match Mark Spitz's record of seven golds in one Olympiad. Spitz set seven world records in eight days in Munich. A look at the other top performances in one Olympics by a swimmer:
Mark Spitz
7 golds in 8 days
1972 — Munich
Aug. 28 ... 200 butterfly ... 2:00.70 ... world record
Aug. 28 ... 4x100 freestyle relay ... 3:26.42 ... world record
Aug. 29 ... 200 freestyle ... 1:52.78 ... world record
Aug. 31 ... 100 butterfly ... 54.27 ... world record
Aug. 31 ... 4x200 freestyle relay ... 7:35.78 ... world record
Sept. 3 ... 100 carbide face mill convex cutter freestyle ... 51.22 ... world record
Sept. 4 ... 4x100 medley relay ... 3:48.16 ... world record
Michael Phelps
6 golds — 2 bronze in 8 days
2004 — Athens
Aug. 14 ... 400 individual medley ... 4:08.26 ... world record
Aug. 15 ... 4x100 freestyle relay ... 3:14.62 ... bronze
Aug. 16 ... 200 freestyle ... 1:45.32 ... bronze
Aug. 17 ... 200 butterfly ... 1:54.04 ... Olympic record
Aug. 17 ... 4x200 freestyle relay ... 7:07.33 ... American record
Aug. 19 ... 200 individual medley ... 1:57.14 ... Olympic record
Aug. 20 ... 100 butterfly ... 51.25 ... Olympic record
Aug. 21 ... 4x100 medley relay ... 3:30.68 ... world record
Note: Phelps swam only prelims of medley relay but received gold medal.
Matt Biondi
5 golds — 1 silver — 1 bronze in 8 days
1988 — Seoul
Sept. 18 ... 200 freestyle ... 1:47.99 ... bronze
Sept. 21 ... 4x200 freestyle relay ... 7:12.51 ... world record
Sept. 21 ... 100 butterfly ... 53.01 ... silver
Sept. 22 ... 100 freestyle ... 48.63 ... Olympic record
Sept. 23 ... 4x100 freestyle relay ... 3:16.53 ... world record
Sept. 24 ... 50 freestyle ... home made face mask 22.14 ... world record
Sept. 25 ... 4x100 medley relay ... 3:36.93 ... world record
Kristin Otto
6 golds in 7 days
1988 — Seoul
Sept. 19 ... 100 freestyle ... 54.93
Sept. 20 ... 4x100 freestyle relay ... 3:40.63 ... Olympic record
Sept. 22 ... 100 backstroke ... 1:00.89
Sept. 23 ... 100 butterfly ... 59.00 ... Olympic record
Sept. 24 ... 4x100 medley relay ... 4:03.74 ... Olympic record
Sept. 25 ... 50 freestyle ... 25.49 ... Olympic record
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