Profile: Michael Phelps - A normal guy from another planet

Profile: Michael Phelps - A normal guy from another planet

Beijing has a new temple; the Water Cube, so elevated by the remarkable achievements of American swimmer Michael Phelps. On Sunday the 4 x 100m medley will likely draw a record live television audience for a swimming event when Phelps lines up alongside his fellow ‘Yanks in the tank’ chasing an unprecedented eighth Olympic gold medal at one Games.

Michael Phelps swims in a men's 200-meter individual medley semi-final at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing
In the water nothing is left to chance. Michael Phelps spends six hours a day submerged Photo: AP
Michael Phelps - A normal guy from another planet
Michael Phelps will bank a million dollars from sponsors Speedo for equaling the 36-year old record of Mark Spitz Photo: AFP/GETTY

Were he to stand in a different line-up Phelps might be considered a usual suspect. In the late 19th century physicians would see in the physiognomy of men like Phelps a predisposition toward criminality. The long jaw, jug ears, ill-fitting teeth and lisp would have marked him as one for the Bow Street Runner to watch. Not to mention his size 14 feet and arm span three inches longer than his of 6ft 4 ins frame.

Nowadays we know better. We have even evolved sufficiently to classify unruly behaviour in children as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, a condition that used to carry a custodial sentence in Borstal. And so the Baltimore tearaway who wouldn’t sit still has letters behind his name; ADHD.

He also has a charge sheet. Four years ago he was arrested for drink driving, a teenage misdemeanour that has never been repeated. Phelps described it as a learning experience, a growing pain associated with his introduction to the college environment.

In adolescence Phelps was driven to water in desperation as much as inclination by his mother Debbie, a school teacher, who divorced when her son was nine. The North Baltimore Aquatic Club proved as proficient a corrective facility as any detention centre, especially when Phelps was introduced to local swimming coach Bob Bowman at 11.

Bowman, 43, is the brains behind the most successful swimmer-coach pairing in the history of the sport, underpinning the extraordinary physical gifts of his charge with a layer of intellectual weight. Bowman, a college swimmer himself, graduated with a major in developmental psychology and a minor in musical composition from Florida State University. Perhaps Bowman can read his mind. They make sweet music together. Ouch!

Phelps describes their relationship as a marriage. Heated exchanges at the Michigan State poolside in Ann Arbor are common. Orders to swim 3,000 metre shifts routinely resisted. Hats and goggles fly through the air. “Those days are bye-bye. I don’t do what he says 100 per cent anymore. That’s when he gets mad,” says Phelps.

Bowman likens his work to training horses, which is appropriate enough given Phelps eats like one. A total of 12,000 calories a day, six times the recommended intake, pass through his digestive tract in three helpings. Fancy this for breakfast? Three fried egg sandwiches with cheese, tomatoes, fried onions and mayo, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast and to finish off three pancakes with chocolate chips. No wonder his day starts at five in the morning. “I eat, sleep and swim. That’s all I can do,” said Phelps when asked how he would prepare for his final assault on the magic eight.

In this marriage of the equine and aquatic, Bowman does not invest in what he hears from the horse’s mouth, as it were, he intuits like the horse whisperer by watching and observing. In January this year in wintry southern California, Bowman described a rare defeat as one of the most impressive performances Phelps had delivered.

It was in the breaststroke, his weakest stroke, The significance of the outcome, narrowly pipped by specialist Mark Gangloff, who contested for the United States the 100m breaststroke in Beijing, was the proximity of first to second; fingertips apart. That was all the confirmation Bowman needed that his man was honing in on the eight.

When he is not swimming, eating or sleeping he likes to walk his dog Herman. Should you find yourself in the vicinity of Main Street, Ann Arbor, Phelps is the one plugged into Young Jeezy with his cap on backwards.

In the water nothing is left to chance. He spends six hours a day submerged. He contested his first international gala as a 15-year-old at the Sydney Olympics, finishing fifth in the 200m butterfly. Six months later he broke the world record in the event at the United States Nationals, becoming the youngest to hold a world mark. He is never satisfied. Heading to Beijing he was still fine tuning the positioning of his head in the freestyle. “I have never swum it right.” His cranium sits too high in the water, apparently.

Phelps will bank a million dollars from sponsors Speedo for equaling the 36-year old record of Mark Spitz, who fished a magnificent seven golds out of the pool in Munich. Not that he needs the money. Phelps has been on the books of sports marketing agency Octagon since 2001. Contracts with Speedo, PowerBar, AT&T, \Omega, Visa and language software specialists Rosetta Stone among others, pouring dollars into the Phelps mint.

One can only imagine what Phelps’s earning potential might be had he been blessed with the handsome head of Spitz, who managed to neuter the negative impact of a hirsute top lip. Spitz wore neither goggles, hat nor suit, and swam in pools that were not built for speed. He eases towards retirement working as a financial adviser and motivational speaker.

The world turns. The LZR race suit worn by Phelps has space age DNA in its design. Thanks to the input of fluid dynamics engineers from NASA, today’s suits have knocked an estimated two per cent off times. The technology has evolved over the past 12 years since it was discovered that the movement of skin creates avoidable turbulence called drag. Bad hydrodynamics.

Pools, too, have trained on. Like racecourses, the going can be soft, good or firm. The depth is crucial; too shallow and the turbulence created through the water is deflected off the bottom. An estimated £100m was spent by the Chinese on creating the fastest pool ever constructed; depth and temperature meeting optimum specifications.

Phelps can’t go wrong. As if. By the time he carries his golden swag out of Beijing, Phelps will have contested at least 17 races, four more than Spitz in 1972. The debate rages about his credentials as the greatest Olympian. Telegraph columnist, James Cracknell, an admirer and holder of two rowing golds from Sydney and Athens, argues that others have a greater claim on that accolade, Steve Redgrave being one on the grounds that his five golds were garnered across five games.

Phelps is not done yet. He plans to swim in London in 2012, his fourth, after which all arguments could well be rendered meaningless. When asked what it would be like were Phelps to equal his record, Spitz replied: “It would be like the second man on the moon.”

And if he beats it? “First man on Mars,” Spitz said, which rough accords with the view of the Russians beaten into second in the 4 x 200m freestyle, who described him as “a normal bloke from another planet.”