1. ‘The race of the century’: Michael Phelps has said a big reason he is trying to make Olympic swimming history is to promote the sport.
The decision he made about which events to swim in the 2004 Athens Games shows he is a young man of his word.
Of course, it helped that what is good for swimming also is good for Phelps in his $1 million quest to win seven gold medals, matching Mark Spitz’s feat at the 1972 Olympics.
After qualifying for an unprecedented six individual events at the U.S. Olympic trials, Phelps learned it would be too hard to swim all six in the Games. He dropped the 200-meter backstroke, in which he finished second at the trials to world record-holder Aaron Peirsol.
Phelps kept the 200 freestyle, in which he will race not only one of the sport’s legends, Ian Thorpe of Australia, but could be in a final that includes the four fastest 200-meter swimmers in history.
Phelps knew all along a confrontation with Thorpe would be sure to attract plenty of attention.
“One thing I have always wanted to do is take on Ian Thorpe in a freestyle event,” Phelps said.
No sooner had he announced his choice of events than Australian papers called it “The race of the century.”
The century may be young, but the hyperbole seems justified. The Aug. 16 final of the men’s 200 freestyle is, at least for a U.S. audience, the most compelling event of the 2004 Olympic Games?and the Tribune’s choice to begin this otherwise random list of 20 Olympic events, people and stories worth watching.
Phelps is No. 4 on the all-time list, with a personal best of 1 minute 45.99 seconds. He will be an underdog not only to Thorpe, the world record-holder in 1:44.06 who has swum the four fastest and eight of the top nine times in history, but to defending champion Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands, whose best is 1:44.89. Grant Hackett of Australia, the third fastest ever in the event at 1:45.84, also is a medal contender.
Thorpe, still only 21, may have been upset by van den Hoogenband in the 200 at the Sydney Olympics, but that hardly slowed Thorpemania in Australia, the one country in the world where swimming is a major sport. He already had won two Olympic gold medals at that point, one with a scintillating anchor leg to hold off Gary Hall in the 4×100 freestyle relay, ending the U.S.’ unbeaten streak in that Olympic event.
“The status that Thorpe has in Australia is absolutely enormous,” Phelps said. “He has played a big part in swimming history.”
Thorpe is everything Phelps, 19, wants to be: a multimillionaire athlete who has transcended the sport to become a major personality.
With that comes some unwanted attention. No sooner had Thorpe been seen at a fashion show in Milan, Italy, than he was asked about his sexual preferences in a radio interview upon returning to Australia. Phelps apparently is ready to live with that downside of fame.
“I can go out in public right now and live my life how I want to live it,” Phelps said earlier this year. “In that case, I’m very happy and excited with how things are.
“But to change the way the sport of swimming is seen, which Thorpe did in Australia, there are going to be some things you have to go through that you don’t like. You just have to do them.”
Like Phelps, 16 when he became the youngest men’s world record-holder in history, Thorpe was a child prodigy. At 14, he was the youngest ever to make Australia’s national team. At 15, he became the youngest men’s swimming world champion in history. At 17, going into the 2000 Olympics, he had nine sponsorship deals worth an estimated $1.5 million. The entire nation was behind Thorpe?or weighing him down?at the Sydney Games, when he won three gold and one silver.
When Thorpe fell from the blocks in a heat and was disqualified for a false start from the 400 meters at the Australian Olympic trials in March, apparently costing himself a spot in that race in the 2004 Olympics, the mishap became a national catastrophe.
Even Prime Minister John Howard chipped in, saying, “I bet [Aussie swim officials] are tying to find an honorable way of handling what is a real tragedy for the country.”
Someone was. Craig Stevens, who had earned the second spot in the 400, withdrew in favor of Thorpe after reportedly being paid from $40,000 to $90,000 for the TV interview in which Stevens announced his decision. Stevens will swim the 1,500 and a relay.
“Nothing can prepare you for this,” Thorpe said of his celebrity before the 2000 Olympics. “But things don’t startle me anymore. I don’t have normalcy when I walk down the street, but I have to be able to accept it and understand it is a normal part of my life.”
As swimmers, the difference between Thorpe and Phelps is their strokes. Thorpe is Rembrandt, a master of essentially one art form. Phelps is Michelangelo, equally brilliant in a number of arts.
Phelps qualified for the Olympics in both individual medleys?which use all four strokes?both butterfly races, the 200 backstroke and the 200 freestyle. Few ever have been so versatile at the top level of the sport.
Thorpe swims only freestyle, but none ever has been better in a stroke he revolutionized, swimming the entire 400 free with the six-beat kick only sprinters used. He will swim the 200 and 400 free and relays in Athens.
At last year’s world championships, where Thorpe won the 200 and 400 freestyles, the Aussie did the reverse of what Phelps is trying this summer by taking on Phelps in one of his best events, the 200 individual medley.
Thorpe, who rarely swims the event, finished second, but he was 3.62 seconds behind Phelps’ world-record time. It was by far the largest winning margin in the 17 times the 200 IM has been on the Olympic and world programs. Phelps even overwhelmed Thorpe in the race’s 50 meters of freestyle.
Said Finland’s Jani Sievenen, who held the 200 IM world record for nine years before Thorpe broke it, “Everything physically is to his [Phelps’] advantage?narrow hips, short legs, long upper body, long arms and big feet.”
The perfect physical specimen? “Yes,” Sievenen said. “Much better than Mr. Thorpe.”
Before the 200 IM in Barcelona, Phelps’ mother, Debbie, met Thorpe’s mother, Margaret. They had chatted about things of little consequence, Debbie Phelps said, until Mrs. Thorpe came to the point. This is how Debbie Phelps remembered it:
“The papers say your son and my son are rivals,” Mrs. Thorpe said. “My son has no rivals.”
Such a rivalry would, of course, be a huge boost for swimming, even if it seems Thorpe should easily beat Phelps in the 200 free. The Aussie’s best time this season, 1:45.07 in winning his Olympic trials, is more than a second faster than what Phelps swam, 1:46.27, in winning his trials.
But Thorpe swam just six times in his Olympic trials, while Phelps swam 17. The 200 free final was Phelps’ sixth swim, and he clearly was saving energy.
They should come into the Olympic 200 free final with equal energy.
Before that race, if all goes to plan, Phelps will have swum preliminaries and the final of the 400 IM, heats and final in the 400 freestyle relay, and prelims and semifinal of the 200 free. Thorpe will have swum prelims and final of the 400 free, prelims and final in the 400 free relay and prelims and semifinal of the 200 free.
The 400 IM is more demanding than the 400 free, but Thorpe may face more of a challenge than Phelps.
A year ago, Phelps took motivational umbrage at comments of veteran Aussie swim coach Don Talbot before the world meet. Talbot said calling Phelps the successor to Thorpe as the world’s leading swimmer was a rush to judgment.
“It put a lot of fire [in me],” said Phelps, who set an unprecedented five world records in four different events, three of which he won, at the 2003 worlds. Thorpe won his two individual world meet races last year in pedestrian times, by his standards.
Thorpe repeatedly has said he doesn’t think anyone can win seven golds. Phelps retorted, “It just means he is saying he can’t do it.”
The Aussie media pounced on that exchange. “Phelps Dismisses Thorpe,” headlined the Australian Associated Press. “Cocky U.S. Ace Aims Gibe at Thorpe,” said the Queensland Courier Mail. “Phelps falls short?Thorpe still a class above at 200m,” wrote the Sydney Daily Telegraph of Phelps’ time in the U.S. trials.
Phelps shares the last opinion.
“Ian has been so dominant in that race, and I’d like to race the best,” he said of the 200 free.
He will. Even if it turns out to be Pieter van den Hoogenband.
2. The Golden Girls: Thirtysomethings Mia
Hamm, Julie Foudy, Joy
Fawcett, Kristine Lilly and
Brandi Chastain have become
icons in their native
sports culture since they
starred for the gold-medal
U.S. women’s soccer team
at the 1996 Olympics and
the 1999 Women’s World
Cup, both held in the U.S.
These Olympics are the last tournament in
which all five will play together, as Lilly,
Foudy and Hamm have said this is their finale
in international play. After losing in
the final of the 2000 Olympics and semifinals
of the 2003 World Cup, they are hoping
to go into a golden sunset. They unofficially
opened the Olympics with a match
Wednesday–two days before the Opening
Ceremonies–against Greece on the island
of Crete.
3. Men’s 200-meter dash: The 200 meters normally is a poor relation
to the 100 (world’s fastest human) and
the 400 (fastest around a lap of the track).
But the final of the 200, scheduled Aug. 26,
was the first Olympic session to sell out
because it features home boy Kostas Kederis,
the defending champion. Kederis, a
surprise winner in 2000, has made a habit
of running infrequently, then mysteriously
blowing the doors off everyone in big
meets, spurring rumors of doping. The 200
also has a historical component worthy of
attention: A 192-meter footrace was the
only sporting event in the first 14 ancient
Olympic Games.
4. China’s table tennis players: China won every title in the last two
Olympics, and that utter dominance
should continue. The Chinese have the top
two Olympic seeds in men’s singles, top
three in women’s singles and top two in
men’s and women’s doubles. And that
doesn’t even count émigré women like
sixth-seeded Li Jia Wei of Singapore,
eighth-seeded Liu Jia of Austria and 10thseeded
Gao Jun of the U.S.
5. The marathon: No event captures the romantic element
of having the Olympics return to their ancient
and modern roots than the marathon.
When the Games were revived in
1896, so was the legend of Pheidippides,
who was said to have run some 24 miles
from Marathon to Athens to announce
that a badly outmanned Greek army had
defeated the Persians at the battle of Marathon
in 490 B.C. The 1896 race, retracing
those storied footsteps, took on added local
significance because no Greek athlete had
won a track and field event until Spiridon
Louis–variously described as a shepherd,
a farmer, a soldier and a messenger–beat
16 other men for the title. The 2004 men’s
race Aug. 29 and women’s race Aug. 22 will
follow most of the same same hilly, hot
course used in 1896, although the distance
was lengthened to the current 26 miles 385
yards at the 1908 Olympics. While weather
and course difficulty will slow times,
world record-holders Paul Tergat of Kenya
and Paula Radcliffe of England are among
the favorites.
6. Maurice Greene, U.S., sprinter: After a couple of injuryplagued
seasons in which
he was derided as “Slo
Mo,” Greene has an excellent
shot at becoming the
only man to cross the 100-
meter finish line first in
two Olympics. (Carl Lewis
won two golds in the 100,
but the second came after
winner Ben Johnson was
disqualified for steroid use). Were Greene
to win consecutive golds, he would live up
to the acronym “G.O.A.T” tattooed on his
arm. G.O.A.T? It stands for “Greatest of All
Time.” The 100-meter final is Aug. 22.
7. Sada Jacobson: U.S., fencer: In this most cerebral of
Olympic sports, it figures
that a Yale junior could be
the first U.S. woman to
win a fencing medal. The
last U.S. medalist, period,
was Peter Westbrook in
1984, who took bronze. Jacobson
comes into the
Olympics as the world’s
top-ranked fencer in saber,
a debut event Aug. 17 for women at the
Olympics. Saber is the most swashbuckling
of fencing’s three disciplines, the one
most resembling the fencing seen in movies,
and the only discipline in which
points are scored with the tip and the
blade edge. Jacobson’s younger sister, Emily,
10th-ranked saberist in the world, also
will be competing in Athens before enrolling
at Columbia in the fall.
8. Hicham El Guerrouj, Morocco, track: El Guerrouj is trying to avoid becoming
his country’s version of Jim
Ryun, a legendary miler without an
Olympic title. El Guerrouj was so
haunted by his fall in the 1,500-meter
final at the 1996 Olympics that he
kept a picture of it on his wall until
the 2000 Olympics. He had not lost a
single mile race from 1998 through
the 2000 Games, when he succumbed
to the weight of enormous national
pressure and finished second to Kenya’s
Noah Ngeny. After that defeat,
El Guerrouj went unbeaten until
early July of this year, when he finished
eighth at an invitational meet
in Rome. Bothered by breathing
problems all this year, El Guerrouj
waited until early August to decide
for certain that he would run in Athens,
where the metric mile will be
Aug. 24.
9. Lauren Jackson, Australia, basketball: Jackson has what one
could call naked ambition.
The most valuable player
in the WNBA last year
and leading scorer last
year and this, the 23-yearold
forward for the Seattle
Storm caused a firestorm
by posing nude for an
Australian magazine. The
athlete-sex object dichotomy
is only one of those in
Jackson’s persona. On her
back she has a tattoo honoring
her mother, Maree, who holds the single-season
women’s scoring record at LSU. On her hip she
has a tattoo honoring Marilyn Manson, the bizarre,
androgenous rock star. Jackson was the leading
scorer and rebounder for the Aussie team that won a
silver medal in 2000. The Aussies open group play
Aug. 14 against Nigeria. The gold-medal match is
Aug. 28.
10. The Grandes Dames: Oksana Chusovitina of Uzbekistan, Jeannie Longo of France,
Birgit Fischer of Gernany and Jenny Thompson of the U.S. are female
Olympic champions of a certain age. Gymnast Chusovitina,
29, is the reigning world champion in vault and a gold medalist in
the team event 12 years ago. In the Aug. 22 vault final, she could become
the oldest Olympic women’s gymnastics champion since
1968. Cyclist Longo, 45, already the oldest women’s champion in
her sport and winner of 13 world titles, is a medal contender in the
time trial Aug. 18 and road race Aug. 15. Flatwater canoeist Fischer,
42, who said she had retired after the Sydney Games, has as
many distinctions as Longo. Fischer was the youngest Olympic canoeing
champion at 18 in 1980, and her gold in Sydney made her
the only woman in any sport to win golds 20 years apart. She has
seven golds and 10 medals, totals that undoubtedly would have
been higher had her former country, East Germany, not boycotted
the 1984 Games. Canoe finals are Aug. 27-28. Columbia medical student
Thompson, 31, is the most decorated U.S. female Olympian,
with eight golds and 10 medals. Another medal would make
Thompson the second-oldest female swimmer to win one, after Dara
Torres, 33 when she earned gold in 2000. Thompson has qualified
in two individual events, the 100 butterfly, whose final is Aug.
15, and the 50 freestyle, with the final Aug. 21. She also may swim
on two relays, the 400 free Aug. 14 and 400 medley Aug. 21.
11. Dr. Don Catlin, Drug tester/pharmacologist: Catlin’s scientific spadework at his
UCLA lab uncovered the steroid THG at
the center of the biggest doping scandal
in U.S. sports history. Will he have more
tricks up his sleeve in the Athens lab?
12. Franziska van Almsick, Germany, swimming: The wunderkind of the 1992 Olympics,
when she won two silver and two
bronze medals at 14, van Almsick has
won four more Olympic medals but still
is looking for her first gold in the 200
freestyle final Aug. 17. Her performance
at the 2002 European championships
raised expectations, as she won five
events and broke her 8-year-old world
record in the 200 free. Born in East Germany,
she became the first star of the
unified Germany after the four medals
in 1992.
13. Dmitry Sautin, Russia, diving: At 30, Sautin is the sport’s
man of nine lives and its best
male athlete since the legendary
Greg Louganis retired in
1988. Stabbed repeatedly in
an attack on a Russian street
13 years ago, Sautin came
back from two months in the
hospital to win a springboard
bronze at the 1992 Olympics.
With an injured wrist that
would need surgery after the
1996 Olympics, he won the
platform gold in Atlanta. Two
years after back surgery, he
won four medals in 2000,
when synchronized diving
made its Olympic debut. This
year, when he hopes to win
his first springboard gold
Aug. 24, Sautin has been sidelined
by a bad shoulder.
14. Pyrros Dimas, Greece, weightlifting: Greece’s reincarnation of Hercules will really look superhuman if
he can win an unprecedented fourth gold medal in his sport. Injuries
kept Dimas, 32, out of action for three years after the 2000 Olympics,
and he finished just fourth in the European championships this year.
Dimas, a national hero, will carry the Greek flag in the Opening Ceremonies,
reprising the role he played eight years ago in Atlanta. And
he isn’t even a native son: Dimas was born in Albania, although his
grandparents are Greek.
15. Women’s wrestling: In the only new sports discipline on the program, women will make
their Olympic wrestling debut in four freestyle classes Aug. 22-23.
Watch the 105.5-pound class, where Ukraine’s Irina Merlini likely
will meet Patricia Miranda of the U.S. in the final, as they did in last
year’s world meet. Merlini, a three-time world champion, won that
match 5-4 over Miranda, the Stanford Phi Beta Kappa who has deferred
her entry to Yale Law School until after the Olympics. She has
overcome a daunting opponent, her father, a doctor who tried to keep
her from wrestling because he thought it would detract from her
schoolwork. Miranda cut a deal: I get straight A’s in high school, Dad
lets me wrestle. She did, as captain of the boys team.
16. Gymnastics team finals: Can the U.S. sweep? The men were second
to China at the 2003 worlds, while the women
won the gold. An improving U.S. program
and the precipitous decline of Russia–
which, as the Soviet Union/Unified Team is
the only country to sweep since World War II,
having done it five times–gives the U.S.
teams a shot, although the men’s chances are
less. The men’s team final is Aug. 16, the
women’s Aug. 17.
17. Ryoko Tamura Tani, Japan, judo: Judo is a national
obsession in Japan,
which introduced the
martial art into the
Olympics at the Tokyo
Games of 1964. And a
woman nicknamed
“Softie” has become a
national hero in a
sport that first appealed
to her because
she thought it would
give her a chance to
throw her big brother
around. Tani, who competes in the 48-kg
class, won an Olympic silver medal at 16 in
1992, another silver in 1996 and gold in 2000.
She also has won six straight world titles. Tani
was married last year in a Paris ceremony
to Japanese baseball league player Yoshitomo
Tani, who will be in Athens trying to win
their country’s first baseball gold.
18. Return to the roots: shot put, archery, marathon: In the ancient Olympics, cheaters were
fined by having to pay for golden statues of
Zeus that lined the path athletes took from
the sacred temples of Olympia to the stadium.
Only the bases from some of the 16 statues
remain, but they could be a sobering reminder
for the men’s shot putters who compete
Aug. 18 at Olympia. After all, the three
medalists in the 1992 Olympic shot put previously
had served doping suspensions, and
two of the three medalists in 1996 had previous
suspensions that turned into lifetime
bans when they tested positive for steroids a
second time. The women putters also compete
Aug. 18 at Olympia as part of Athens’
Olympic organizers attempts to recapture
the past spirit of the Games. The archers are
linked to both ancient festivals and the first
modern Olympics, the 1896 Athens Games, by
having their events Aug. 15-21 in the Panathanaic
Stadium, also known as the Marble Stadium.
It was built on the excavated ruins of a
4th Century B.C. arena used for the track
events in the ancient Panathanean Games.
Both marathons also will finish in the Panathanaic
Stadium.
19. Kenenisa Bekele, Distance runner, Ethiopia: Bekele, 22, is the latest marvel from a country
that is one of the world’s poorest economically
and one of the richest in distance-running
talent. In 2000, Ethiopian men and women
won eight of the 24 medals in the 5,000,
10,000 and marathon, including all three
men’s golds. Bekele could win two by himself
if he abandons his stated plan to run only the
10,000, where he likely will contend with legendary
countryman Haile Gebrselassie, winner
of the race the last two Olympics. Bekele
broke Gebrselassie’s world records for the
5,000 and 10,000 within nine days in late
spring, and the Olympic schedule lends to a
5-10 double. There will be just one 10,000 race,
the Aug. 20 final, and the first of two 5,000
races is not until Aug. 25, with the final Aug.
28. Bekele, who won the 10,000 and was third
in the 5,000 at the 2003 world meet, could become
the first since countryman Miruts Yifter
in 1980 to win the track races his country
prizes most.
20. Men’s soccer: Iraq vs. Portugal: Its players
were tortured
and imprisoned
for poor results
when Saddam
Hussein’s sadistic
son, Udai,
was head of the
Iraqi soccer federation.
Less
than a year after
Udai Hussein
and his brother,
Qusai, were
killed by U.S.
forces, and with
their country
still in turmoil,
the Iraqi soccer
team miraculously
earned the last Asian qualifying spot
in a 16-team field for the Olympics. “Now we
don’t think about any punishments. We’re
playing comfortably and freely,” said goalie
Ahmed Ali, 23. The Iraqis, who had not qualified
for Olympic soccer since 1988, open
against Portugal on Aug. 12 at Patras. To advance,
they must make the top two in a group
that includes Costa Rica and Morocco.
