In the press conference later, Aaron said that I needed to stop playing mind games by keeping my Trials schedule a secret, but I was just going about my business. The reason we did what we did was to give us options until the last minute. If we didn’t make the best decision we could, we’d have to wait four years to make a better one. A few days later Peter called to say that Aaron’s agent had sent out a press release that mentioned that Aaron had beaten me twice, and included the headline: “Peirsol Beats Phelps Twice. Sun Still Comes Up on Monday.” Peter used to play hockey, so he is used to sticks and pucks flying around him at high speeds. I think one of the reasons he is so good at what he does is that he always keeps his cool, even under stress, and I could hear some stress in his voice during that phone call. There are a lot of good people in our sport, and it was rare to see anyone cross a line of professionalism that badly. Hey Peter, you okay?
I came back home in time to count my blessings. Miss Janice Deamon would see to that. Miss Janice was the secretary at Towson High School, where she used to check me in every day. She liked looking after the students at Towson and hearing whatever stories they were willing to share with her, and she was as good as anyone at building up school spirit. I came by to see her one day and she had some surprises for me. First, she had cut out some cardboard from a Kleenex box and made a red, white and blue medal that she hung on her office door. Then she put holy water on my arms to bring me good luck over the summer. Talk about using your connections.
With all the visits, training and media responsibilities, I didn’t realize how tired I was getting until one Sunday evening after practice. Hilary and Whitney were coming over for dinner, but I was in the middle of one of my power naps. Hilary knocked on my door and tried to wake me up. “Michael, are you hungry? We have dinner.” She remembers me staring at her with a dazed look on my face and mumbling something like, “Okay, I’ll be down in a minute.” Three hours later, I walked downstairs and asked Mom: “Where are Hilary and Whitney? I thought they were coming for dinner.” Oh well, I like leftovers.
It wasn’t as if Hilary didn’t have enough ammunition to tease me. There was the time I tried to buy her a nice gift for Christmas two years ago and I made a gift-buying blooper. Hilary loves Christmas; she once opened all her gifts before my mom even made it downstairs. I bought her a classy matching outfit from Ann Taylor, thinking I’d really make some sibling points with a nice gift. I would have if I hadn’t bought a Size 1 pair of pants and a Size 8 shirt. I try. I really try.
Hilary looks after me so much that at times I tell her it’s like having two mothers, especially the way she is taking on some of Mom’s habits. Sometimes my mom drives pretty slow and enjoys the scenery. She’ll point out things and places while she’s driving and since she knows everybody, she always seems to stop and say hello to friends she passes on the way. Not me. If I’m going somewhere, I just want to get there as efficiently as I can. Now Hilary is taking after Mom. Sometimes, she’ll be in her car and I’ll be following and after we get to where we’re going, I’ll say, “Hilary, the gas pedal’s on the right.” She’ll say, “Ah, I’m turning into my mom, I know.”
On June 30, my family took me out for dinner and then had a 19th birthday party for me at the house. With Mom’s blessing, we invited Dad to the dinner, too. He had been making an attempt to get back into my life, which was a little unexpected.
Over the past four years, I don’t think either one of us really reached out to the other. I was so focused on going to the Olympics that I wasn’t going to change something that was working. Hanging out with friends was different, because I could spend some time with them and stop and go home or go to practice if I had to leave them behind, and they always understood. If I was with my dad, I sort of felt that there was commitment involved and that I couldn’t just up and leave without creating a “discussion.” This was really his first big attempt at trying to bring me back into his life. The past 15 years haven’t been easy on our relationship. I think it’s necessary to have a father figure in your life, even when you get older.
He started trying to do things I like to do. He’ll say, “Want to go to lunch? Want to go to Pete’s?” I’d say, “Sure, why not?” At dinner, he’d ask if I wanted to play some cards later on. He started emailing and text messaging on my BlackBerry. When I was younger we used to watch a lot of baseball. In high school, I became a huge football fan. I’ve watched a few games on TV with my dad lately, and I realize just how well he understands the game because of his background in it. We’ll be watching TV and he’ll look at the formations on the field and just call a play. “Michael, this is a run play to the right.” And he’ll be right. It’s fun to watch the game with someone who can give you an education in it. And, yes, it’s fun for me when that person is my dad.
I’ve had friends ask if maybe he was making the effort then because he doesn’t want to be left out of the spotlight. I don’t think that’s it. My dad lost his own father when he was eight, about the age I was when he divorced my mom. He didn’t have any sort of blueprint for a father-son relationship during his teenage years, years that are more complex than toddler years. It’s easier, sometimes, to raise six-year-olds, when they’re always hanging by your side and you just tell them yes, no and because I said so. It’s harder when kids grow up and have to make choices. He never had his dad around to help him make those choices, so maybe he wasn’t sure how to help me make mine. In my mind I haven’t completely given him the benefit of the doubt; I wish he had reached out more and reached out sooner. Still, I see him trying a lot more these days. I know we won’t ever be as close as we were when I was six, but I think we can do better than we have. I don’t know that I’ll ever forget the feelings I had at the AT&T tent in Sydney, but I also can’t forget the days he took me to watch the Orioles or stood behind the blocks and told to me to get ’em next time. He wanted me to know then that there was a next time for me. I want him to know now that there can be a next time for him.
A few days later, I had my last chance to see some of my friends before the Olympics, and I don’t think Matt and I were prepared for just how emotional that would make both of us. It wasn’t as if we were never going to hang out again, but with me heading to Ann Arbor, who knew where I’d be spending my next few birthdays? Who knew how our lives were about to change?
I’m not sure if Matt and I became such good friends because he lost his father when he was three years old and neither one of us grew up with dads in our homes. We have just always seemed to understand each other in the way that best friends do. And we both had a feeling we couldn’t quite put our fingers on. People move on when they get older. It probably wouldn’t be the last birthday we spent together, but it might be the last time we’d all be at a place we called home for one of our birthdays. In that way, we were sharing something together for the last time.
I was busy packing my bags the next night, but I asked my mom if she wanted to watch Miracle. She had never seen it, so I told her I’d pop in and out while she watched and I packed. Instead I was running up and down the steps every few minutes, telling her to watch for something specific that was about to happen in the next scene. About midway through the movie I just decided to sit and watch with her. I have a bad habit of telling people what to look for in movies I’ve already seen. I have pretty much memorized dialogue from films like Tommy Boy, Billy Madison, Friday, Scarface and Pulp Fiction, and Jamie says it’s impossible to watch movies with me because I’ll blurt out a word before one of the characters does. Mom likes to ask if I can recite Shakespeare the way I can recite Quentin Tarantino. But Miracle is personal to me. I’d like to think I know what it’s like to pursue a goal with that kind of dedication. It was inspiring to see the team achieve so much with so many obstacles standing in their way. They had no guarantees, just a lot of uncertainty. As I left for Long Beach, I realized I did, too.
21
TRIALS AND DELIBERATIONS
Because there were no relays at the Tria
ls, I had the luxury of trying to compete in six events, including the two IMs, the two flys and both the 200 free and 200 back. If I could qualify in all six, Bob and I knew I would probably have to drop either the 200 free or 200 back, but we were also trying to see if, based on what happened in Long Beach, I might think about swimming both of them in Athens.
The day before competition began, I was up at a podium giving a press conference. The first question was about how I was able to go into a meet like this with so much confidence. In fact, I was a lot more nervous than I let on. This was what all the training and sacrifice was leading to. It was one thing to go to Nationals or an invitational meet thinking about trying to break a record. Miss it and you can break it again next month. But these were the Olympic Trials and they were very different from the 2000 Trials in Indianapolis when I was an unknown. Everyone was watching me now, either expecting me to do well or hoping for me to fail.
“Michael, how many gold medals can you win?” someone asked.
“Anything is possible,” I said, “I don’t think you should ever talk about things you can’t do.”
“Michael, what will it take to win seven gold medals?”
“Well, I have to have the best meet of my career, but I’d be happy with one gold medal.”
“Michael, will people think you failed if you don’t win seven gold medals?”
“I hope not. I’ve always dreamed of winning a gold medal …”
“Michael, just how many gold medals can you win?”
Finally I was feeling punchy, as if I should lose control and tell a joke, something to break the tension. “I guess I can win 15 gold medals if I want to,” I said. Bob nearly went into convulsions in the back of the room. He started making the throat-slashing signal, trying to get me out of there. Be neutral, Michael. Don’t give somebody else something to put on their bulletin board, remember? I had just given them a billboard.
It was a good thing that the 400 IM was the first event. I hated having my longest race as my last race at Worlds the previous summer. It was a long event, and it was hard to save all my emotional and physical energy for that race at the end of the meet. In Long Beach I was fresh and I was prepared, and I had one of the best swims of my life. I hit every split that Bob and I discussed and I was already up by four and a half seconds after the fly and backstroke. I won the race by two bodylengths, lowering my world record to 4:08.41.
The 200 freestyle was the next final two days later. Of all my races, this was the one in which my times were farthest off the world record. There were half a dozen swimmers who were capable of beating me, and I was getting a fair amount of advice not to swim it, but the race also represented a chance to swim against Ian Thorpe in one of his best events, and I didn’t want to miss out on that chance. I really wanted to put up a good time in Long Beach.
The day of the 200 free final, Team Phelps had lunch at Chastity Bono’s Restaurant. Whitney and Hilary had bought a stuffed bulldog they showed to Mom, BJ, and Krista. When you pulled its nose, it would growl and shake; when you patted its head, it would whimper. They gave me the stuffed dog later that night, but when am I going to get the real one?
I was pretty relaxed in the afternoon, but I didn’t really swim the race the way I wanted to swim it. I was simply too cautious and my turns were really slow. I won the event in 1:46.27, finishing sixth-tenths ahead of Klete Keller, but Bob and I definitely wanted to be in the 1:45s, and I left the pool that night uncertain whether I would swim it in Athens.
That was the turning point at Trials. I was angry with myself for the first time during the meet and that anger started replacing some of my nerves. I had to overdo the 200 fly the next day to sort of wake up a little more and get into the meet. I was close to world-record pace for most of the race, but again I had a poor last turn. Without anyone on my heels, I finished in 1:54.31, three-tenths off my world record, and three seconds ahead of Malchow, who finished second, to get back on the team.
Throughout the entire week, people kept asking me questions about Mark Spitz. A couple of reporters wrote stories in which they criticized me for not being very aware of Spitz’s accomplishments until just before the Sydney Games. I remembered then from watching films of him during the Munich Olympics that he wore a moustache, which would have slowed him down, and no goggles, which would have affected his vision. Yet he won seven gold medals in seven events, which nodody else has managed to do. To be mentioned in the same sentence as Spitz was pretty cool. It’s not every day that you’re compared to one of the great Olympians of all time. I had never met him, but I knew he was in Long Beach, and I wondered if I would see him after the competition was over.
I had walked out of the warm-down pool and was talking to Bob, when I heard the public address announcer mention that the man presenting me the winner’s medal would be Mark Spitz. “What!” I said. “Is he kidding?” He wasn’t. Every single person in the stands was on their feet, screaming, cheering. Spitz grabbed my right wrist with his left hand, lifted it into the air in a victorious salute and pointed to me with his right forefinger. There aren’t many things that can make me shake, I mean literally shake, but I could feel goose bumps all the way up and down my arms and legs. He pulled my head down to his to wish me well. “I’ll be over in Athens to watch you,” he said, “and I’m behind you all the way. I know what you’re going through. I went through it once before. Enjoy it. Have fun with it. Go get ’em.” That was amazing. I walked away and needed some time to just process the whole thing. He’s the greatest icon in the sport, and it was like he was passing the torch to me. Very, very cool.
Two days later I was facing my toughest day at the trials, with four races, including evening finals in the 200 back and 200 IM followed by the semis of the 100 fly. I had been thinking specifically of this evening session since I started checking days off my calendar. The day before, Bob had read an article in one of the Sydney papers that quoted Kieren Perkins, Australia’s former distance freestyle star. Perkins was criticizing me for not giving Ian Thorpe enough respect and for coming after him in a freestyle event. “The thing is, Thorpe is the champion,” Perkins said. “He’s competed at that level and won, and while Phelps is a great talent and he’s broken lots of world records, he hasn’t won at that level yet…. You’ve got an unproven athlete having a go at a proven one, and I’m sure Ian’s going to smile wryly and just let it go because he knows that experience is on his side.” Bob sat on the article for a day, because he wanted me to see the comments before the start of the evening session, when I had the three races.
Perkins’ comments set off a bomb inside me. When I read that, I was seething. Are you kidding me? Sean Foley happened to be sitting next to me when I read those comments and I vented in his direction. That’s ridiculous. I may not beat him, but that isn’t the point. The whole idea of competition is that you try to test yourself against the best. Thorpe is the greatest freestyler of all-time, and I want to swim against him when we’re both at our best. We’ve missed a lot of chances to compete against each other. The idea that I should just sit on the side and let Ian have the event just spits in the face of meeting a challenge. Why have an Olympics if you can’t chase the best? I want people to chase after me in my strongest events, because I love challenges. I hate to lose. I just … “Michael, calm down,” Bob told me. Actually, he planted that comment in my mind to fire me up, but it probably did more than he anticipated.
I didn’t swim a very good 200 back. I fell behind Aaron in the first 50, and even as the two of us pulled away from the rest of the field, he was still nearly a bodylength better. Aaron broke his own world record, dropping it to 1:54.74. I never got close to my time in Orlando and took second in 1:55.86. Aaron was psyched. He was bouncing from lane rope to lane rope after the race, and I wasn’t happy at all. I was more upset that I was over half a second off my best time (1:55.30). I always go into big races at big events looking to swim against Michael Phelps. What has he done before? What is he capable of doing?
I didn’t look at the race as a failure, because I finished second to Aaron, but I know I could have swum it faster.
Whatever happened in the 200 back, we needed to stay positive. “That wasn’t a very good third turn,” I said to Bob. “Let’s move on to the next one,” he said. Bob didn’t think the IM was going to be a tough race for me, so he was pretty calm and positive before that race. But he knew the tough one would be the 100 fly at the end of the long day, so he had already planned to get in my face before the start of that race.
I had less than half an hour before getting back into the water for the 200 IM final. People overuse the phrase “staying focused,” but that was what I needed to do. I needed to convince my mind that the 200 back never happened and I needed to convince my body that my legs and arms were fresher than they felt. Bob had all his speeches pre-planned, and he wanted to save his gut-check, in-your-face speech for the butterfly.
I hit my splits exactly as we wanted them. I was a half-second ahead after a 25.05 butterfly split and just stayed very even the rest of the way. My old houseguest, Kevin Clements, was third after the fly and definitely had a chance to get himself on the team with a great swim. I hit the final wall in 1:56.71, well off the world record, but very respectable with the lactate in my legs from the last race. I looked up to see the results. Ryan Lochte was second, 2.7 seconds behind me. Kevin swam well, but finished fifth.
Beneath the Surface Page 18