Word: poole
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...coda to their 4 x 100-m medley-relay defeat in Sydney, where U.S. swimmer Gary Hall Jr. had claimed that the Americans would "smash [the Australians] like guitars." The Aussies won the next two relays, on the back of Thorpe, and mockingly played air guitar in a pool-deck celebration. The first stanzas of their Greek chorus have begun; Thorpe has called Phelps' attempt at a Spitzian haul of golds "ridiculous." Phelps' response: "He's saying he doesn't think it's possible for him to do that. I don't think I would say it's impossible...
Growing up with two sisters who swam competitively, Phelps was practically raised at the pool. "The summer he was born was the summer I started swimming," says his oldest sister Hilary, 26. "The poor kid was always getting dragged to the pool." His mother Debbie remembers bringing baby Michael along in a carrier and parking him on the pool deck during his sisters' practices. When he was 7, Phelps learned to swim, but it took weeks before he could do anything more than the backstroke. "I was afraid to put my head underwater," he admits...
...group in the 100m butterfly. That caught the attention of Bob Bowman, then an assistant coach at the club. "What I noticed about him was that he was fiercely competitive in everything he did, whether it was swimming a race or playing a game at the pool," he says. "He always wanted to win." Bowman called Phelps' parents in for a meeting, alerting them to their son's potential, and in 1996 laid out a 15year plan that would include Phelps' being a part of the 2004, 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic teams. "I'm thinking, This man is crazy...
...though, Phelps' family was breaking up. The same year he learned to swim, Debbie, a Baltimore County school administrator, and Frank, a Maryland state trooper, decided to divorce. The couple had built a home on a fiveacre spread in Harford County, Md., more than 60 miles from the Baltimore pool where their children were training. The round-trip drives, sometimes twice a day, were wearying. Debbie wanted to move the family to Baltimore; Frank wasn't so sure. It was one more issue in a deteriorating relationship. Phelps and his sisters remained with their mother, and when Hilary and Whitney...
...Games will go on, and even if the promise of international unity through ferocious competition seems a bit quaint, the Games are at least a lock to mint fresh heroes who renew the Olympic tag line of "swifter, higher, stronger." The swimming pool doesn't have a roof, but it does have water, in which American Michael Phelps will try to rekindle memories of Mark Spitz. And unlike Montreal's unfinished structure, the Athens Olympic stadium does, as of June, have a roof, though seats are another issue. No matter: the track is down, and on Aug. 24, Moroccan Hicham...