Next two years bring Phelps biggest challenge

It didn’t sound quite right, so Michael Phelps helpfully repeated himself Friday morning at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool in Long Beach.

He was talking about the relative merits of this year and 2008.

“There’s no question,” Phelps said. “These next two years are the biggest years of my professional career.”

You might think this was someone trying to make an Olympic team, or improve on a modest Olympic showing.

But this was Michael Phelps, winner of eight Olympic medals, six of them gold, in Athens in 2004 and a worthy heir to the Mark Spitz legacy, having come closer to matching Spitz’s seven-gold-medal performance of the 1972 Olympics than anyone thought possible, splashing water all over the skeptics.

Phelps offered an explanation on the day before his first race in his first meet of 2007, as he follows the winding road to the Beijing Olympics next year. The Long Beach meet, the Toyota Southern California Grand Prix of Swimming, will serve as something of an appetizer to this year’s main course, the world championships in Melbourne, Australia, in March.

“This is my last Olympics to try an event program like I tried in Athens,” said 21-year-old Phelps. “After this Olympics, I think I’d be too old, I don’t think my body can handle it.

“This worlds sets up everything that happens till the Olympics. For endorsements, for my swimming career, my times, what events I’m going to swim in Beijing, or hope to swim. These next two years really are the biggest key to my career.

“It could make me or break me as an athlete.”

He seems to be the only one with the what-have-you-done-lately attitude. But his particular drive is among the many things that make him special. To that end, he is attempting to iron out a few wrinkles at this short-course meet, opting to swim the 100-yard and 200-yard breaststroke races, something he said he hasn’t done for a few years.

“If I want to get faster in the 400 IM long course, my breaststroke needs to improve,” Phelps said.

He also said he would swim the 100 butterfly, the 100 backstroke, the 400 individual medley, the 500 freestyle and possibly the 100 freestyle in addition to relays.

The four-day meet, which started Friday night with a final in only one race, the 1,000-yard freestyle, features an unusual number of Olympic stars, including Natalie Coughlin, Aaron Peirsol, Ian Crocker and Brendan Hansen, as well as a host of swimmers from Phelps’ Club Wolverine team in Ann Arbor, Mich.

“It’s like an older NCAAs,” Phelps said.

Phelps and his teammates arrived in Southern California on Thursday after having spent 18 days training at altitude in San Luis Potosi in Mexico. Returning to Long Beach, the venue for the 2004 U.S. Olympic trials, brought back a lot of memories.

“We were driving over here and we were driving past the parking lot, where the pool was, and we were, ‘Think about it, that’s where trials were two years ago,’ ” he said. “It’s crazy. It’s a dead parking lot and light posts. It goes by quick. It really does. It’s sort of like a roller coaster.”

*

The first winners of the meet were Olympian Kaitlin Sandeno in the women’s 1,000-yard freestyle, and Olympian Ous Mellouli of Tunisia in the men’s 1,000 freestyle. Sandeno, who grew up in Southern California and now trains with Club Wolverine, won in 9 minutes 37.06 seconds.

Mellouli, of the Trojan Swim Club, went 8:48.23.

*

[email protected]