Ryan Lochte, the primary rival of Phelps in the individual medleys, has sleepy eyes and speaks in sentences that roll off his tongue like gently breaking waves. A Florida graduate from Daytona Beach, Lochte seems as if he should be hanging 10. On Friday morning at the National Aquatics Center, he was trying to ride a huge wave of momentum as far as it would carry him.
Before racing against Phelps on Friday, Lochte started with a come-from-behind upset of his countryman Aaron Peirsol in the 200-meter backstroke, winning his first individual Olympic gold medal in world-record time.
The race ended at 10:21 a.m. local time. Twenty-seven minutes later he had his showdown against Phelps in the 200 I.M., and a less-than-fresh Lochte could not match Phelps.
But then, neither could anyone else. Pulling away from the field in the breaststroke — his weakest leg — Phelps won his sixth gold medal in Beijing (and 12th over all) and set his sixth world record, one of 21 set by swimmers here. He was timed in 1:54.23, finishing more than a body length ahead of the silver medalist, Laszlo Cseh of Hungary. Lochte nearly caught Cseh at the end, but settled for third.
“I just wanted to step on it in the first 50 a little bit and try and get out to an early lead,” Phelps said. “I knew that was a hard double for Ryan.”
Phelps is the king of doubles — he swam his semifinal heat in the 100-meter butterfly 31 minutes after the I.M. and immediately following his latest medal ceremony — but even he was awed by what Lochte did.
“For Ryan to come back 20 minutes later and just miss us going 1-2, that’s an incredible day for him,” said Phelps, who will compete in the 100 butterfly final Saturday morning.
In his semifinals Thursday night, Lochte had 44 minutes between the swims. “So cutting that in half is going to be interesting,” he said with a wry — or was that sly? — smile.
While Lochte shrugged off the degree of difficulty of his double, others were less blasé.
The 200 backstroke is arguably the hardest on the legs of all the swimming races because of the kicking on one’s back and the dolphin-kicking off the walls. But the hardest part of the double, Lochte said, is not physical, but psychological.
By now, it was obvious how large an obstacle Lochte was facing in Phelps, who has been America’s gold standard in the 200 I.M. since 2002. Going into the summer, Phelps had 7 of the 10 fastest swims in the event, with Lochte owning the other three.
But as Phelps closed in on Spitz’s record of seven golds in a single Olympics, Lochte’s other American rival was quietly making history. With his victory Tuesday in the 100 backstroke, Peirsol became the first swimmer since Roland Matthes in 1972 to successfully defend his Olympic title in that event.
Phelps and Peirsol have been so dominant in their events that their rivals have to alter their strategies to have any hopes of beating them, like golfers who need to take risks off the tee to have a chance against Tiger Woods.
When Lochte and Phelps, both 23, met in the 400 I.M. here, Lochte took it out faster than he normally would, hoping to gain a lead over Phelps in the first 200 and then hang on. He did take the lead briefly, at the 150 mark, but tired down the stretch and faded to third.
The 24-year-old Peirsol is known for his strong back halves, so the obvious strategy against him is to build an early lead and try to hang on. Lochte did that, touching ahead of him at the 100 and then coming back to win on the last lap, after Peirsol had taken the lead.
“I touched the wall and I was like, ‘Thank you! Finally!’ ” Lochte said.
Lochte was timed in 1:53.94, 0.38 of a second better than the world record he had held jointly with Peirsol, who finished second in 1:54.33. Arkady Vyatchanin of Russia, who led much of the race, won the bronze medal.
Lochte often is compared to the golfer Phil Mickelson, another athlete who came along at the same time as his sport’s greatest. In any other era, Lochte would be the Man. But rather than view his timing as unfortunate, he sees it as fortuitous.
“If he wasn’t in the sport,” Lochte said of Phelps, “I don’t think I’d be as good at it.”
Phelps’s coach, Bob Bowman, who knows an ambitious schedule when he sees it, described Lochte’s task Friday as “very formidable.” He added: “You’re taking on the best competitor in both. My hat’s off to him.”
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