Pizzas galore!

On his own and in the pool, channelling his energy. When Phelps was 11 his swim coach at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, Bob Bowman, now here in Beijing as USA men’s head coach, took Debbie aside and said: “By 2000, I look for him to be in the Olympic trials. By 2004, he makes the Olympics. By 2008, he’ll set world records. By 2012, the Olympics will be in New York and ...”. The swimmer’s mother was alarmed. Bowman had spotted something incredibly unusual in his pool, not only in terms of talent but outlook and specific intellect.

“Michael’s mind is like a clock. He can go into the 200 butterfly knowing he needs to do the first 50 in 24.6 to break the record and can put that time in his head and make his body do 24.6 exactly,” said his mother. He always did his swimming homework. “In high school, they’d send tapes from his international races. He’d say, ‘Mom I want to have dinner in front of the TV and watch tapes.’ We’d sit and he’d critique his races. He’d study the turns — ‘See, that’s where I lifted my head.’ I couldn’t even see what he was talking about. Over and over.”

Phelps was teased at school for having “sticky out ears” and a gawky expression. His mother recalled that her son “grew unevenly ... it was his ears, then he had very long arms, then he would catch up somewhere else...” For the first time, Phelps talked of the “deep hurt” he felt as a child being teased. His response was telling. He channelled his anger into swimming lessons and later training.

That ability to convert the negative into a positive is one of the secrets of Phelps’s success. "One of the things I call Michael is the motivation machine,” says Bowman. “Bad moods, good moods, he channels everything for gain. He's motivated by success, he loves to swim fast and when he does that he goes back and trains better. He's motivated by failure, by money, by people saying things about him ... just anything that comes along he turns into a reason to train harder, swim better. Channelling his energy is one of his greatest attributes."

Expert View

Why didn't they ring me up before they decided to hold the Olympic Games in Beijing in August? Don't do it, I'd have said

Simon Barnes

• More

• Post a comment

Multimedia

• Simon Barnes in Beijing

• Bring back the tug-of-war

• Top 100 Olympic athletes of all time

Olympics updates direct to your mobile

Put the Beijing Games in your pocket

Phelps claims his place in history

The peerless American won his fifth gold medal of the Games and eleventh overall, making him the most successful Olympian

• The joy of Michael Phelps' epic demented journey

• Profile: Psychology and physiology make Michael Phelps a phenomenon

BACKGROUND

• Wiggins ‘not critical’ for pursuit success

• Tailored course did not suit eventing squads

• Pooley defies gravity to seize silver medal

• Why sex and softball is too much for China

Related Links

• The joy of Phelps' epic demented journey

• Phelps claims his place in history

• Cancer can wait, says Shanteau

Bowman discovered hidden depths to Phelps early on. "He's had the same mental approach since he was very young. There is nothing on his mind. He's able to block everything out," says the coach. A symptom perhaps of the need to bottle-up, to block out, both in what has been at times a troubled home and in the midst of a regime that many would faint away at the very thought of: Phelps covers more than 100km in water a week during the hardest times, seven days a week, including Christmas Day.

"We're seven days, 365 days of the year here," said Phelps. "When you train at Christmas you kinda know that others aren't doing that. It's a good feeling to know you've done something they didn't." Bowman says he actually enjoys it. True? "Yes, I do enjoy it. I enjoy a challenge. The challenge of going to the Olympics and having tons of pressure on you is always out there but I find it exciting. I've got loads of goals to reach for and I'm willing to work for those."

His ability to block out all distractions is one of several weapons in Phelps's war chest. "Sure, I can disappear when I have to," is all that he will say, comfortable with the notion of a place that only the great competitors can go. Swimming is like that: no sound of breath on your neck or footstep behind you, no roar of crowd, only a muffled hum and a relationship with the water. Phelps sings "the same song over and over and over again" a habit that he says is "the one thing that gets me through practice".

Bowman and Phelps have not always enjoyed harmonious times. “Yeah, sure he challenges me,” says Bowman, who the swimmer calls “my second dad”.

“But I think that Michael has a very high regard for me. He doesn't challenge me on what we should be doing in training. I think that where we really clash is where I'm trying to push him to a position he doesn't want to be pushed to. On a daily basis I remind Michael of what his long and short-term goals are and how he stands today in relation to that. That's where that whole thing comes in where many say 'I'll deal with it tomorrow'. I'm there to say ‘No, let's deal with it today’. That’s my job. There's a a lot of work that goes into it. There are a lot of ups and downs. He has bad days just like everybody else.”

Phelps’s arrival in the Baltimore youth pool was the answer to Bowman’s prayers after several failed attempts at translating to sports coaching the rigour and repetition drummed into him as a music scholar. Bowman learned to play piano at 10. At 12, his father took him to watch a swimming competition at which Tracey Caulkins, arguably the most versatile female swimmer in history and deprived by the 1980 Games boycott, held top billing. Watching her was “like hearing an orchestra play", said Bowman, a Beethoven fan with a degree in developmental psychology (minoring in music composition) and owner of a Maryland stud.

In his early days as a swim coach, Bowman’s tempo resulted in burnout among a fair few youngsters. “I was definitely overzealous,” says Bowman. Enter Phelps, a boy who by 11 had a capacity to train in sync with Bowman's beat and compete in a way that turned the standard tune on its head. “His greatest strength is his ability to relax and focus under pressure. As the pressure gets higher, he performs better — that's very rare,” says Bowman. “He has an ability at the critical moment to be at his best.”

An ability, too, to endure what Bowman describes as “a more intense programme than any other swimmer, domestic or international”. Phelps covers between 16 and 18km in training every day (even at altitude, an expenditure of energy that is replenished by breakfasts said to be of a size fit to feed “a small neighbourhood”), trains seven days a week (up to six of them for up to six hours), including Christmas Day, and has done so since he was 14.