With no room for error in his quest to break Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals, Phelps and three American teammates headed into perhaps the toughest obstacle of all on Monday morning: a showdown in the 400-meter freestyle relay against France, a team led by world record holder Alain Bernard.
The French believe they can ruin Phelps’ hopes of going eight-for-eight in a country where eight is considered a lucky number. They’ve certainly got reason to be confident, putting up the best time of the year until a backup American squad broke the world record in the preliminaries on Sunday night.
The French also went under the old mark—just 13-hundredths off the U.S. time of 3:12.23—and that was with Bernard and their other top 100 man, Fabien Gilot, resting up in preparation to join Amaury Leveaux and Frederick Bousquet in the final.
Then again, Lochte was supposed to make a run for the gold in Sunday’s 400 individual medley. But, with President Bush cheering him on, Phelps dominated his first event of the Beijing Olympics with a jaw-dropping time of 4 minutes, 3.84 seconds—crushing his own world record and any hope of his challengers.
“We just don’t know how good that is,” said Eddie Reese, head coach of the U.S. men’s team. “If somebody 10 or 15 years ago would have said the 400 IM will be won in 2008 in 4:03.8, I’d have bet everything I had or would ever get that it wouldn’t happen.”
But the impossible has become the norm where Phelps is concerned. While others break world records by fractions of a second, he takes them down in huge chunks. The 400 IM, where all four strokes are required, was just the latest race to leave folks shaking their heads and wondering how he does it.
Phelps sat out the relay prelims, conserving his energy even though he did have to go through the bother of qualifying for the semifinals of the 200 freestyle. The Americans also rested Garrett Weber-Gale and Jason Lezak, going with a team comprised of Nathan Adrian, Cullen Jones, Ben Wildman-Tobriner and Matt Grevers.
Those four broke the 2-year-old world record, but only Jones will be moving on to swim in the finals. For the others, their work is done.
Unlike the 400 IM, Phelps will have to rely on his teammates to capture his second gold in Beijing. He could swim the best 100 of his life and it still might not be enough to win gold.
But, if Phelps gets past the first of three relays, he might be unstoppable. He holds or helped set the world record in five of his remaining events, and he appears to have teammate Ian Crocker’s number in the other race on his busy schedule, the 100 butterfly.
Phelps got his Olympics started with yet another memorable swim after barely holding off Lochte in the 400 IM at the U.S. trials, where they both eclipsed the previous world record.
Laszlo Cseh of Hungary actually took the silver in 4:06.16, while Lochte faded to third in 4:08.09—more than 4 seconds behind the winner.
After touching, he whipped around so quickly to spot his time that he bumped his head into the wall. Phelps pumped both arms in the air, and quickly spotted his mother and two sisters in the massive stands at the Water Cube.
He then looked the other way, where Bush was waving his American flag, accompanied by the first lady, their daughter Barbara and his father, former President George H.W. Bush.
On the medal stand, Phelps’ eyes watered as the U.S. flag was raised to the rafters.
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