A pool of expectations

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Spotting the magazine cover truly got to Michael Phelps, unnerving him in a way the likes of Ian Thorpe was never able to do or Ian Crocker, Aaron Peirsol and Pieter van den Hoogenband can’t do now.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was this kicker of a headline: “The Greatest Athlete of All Time.”

Muhammad Ali, Pele and Michael Jordan get out of the way, and make room for swim star Phelps.

“I look over and there’s my half-naked body on the news rack,” Phelps said. “I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ I saw that quote and, ‘Geez, only adds more pressure to it.’ I’m a year out, come on now. It’s weird.”

But there was another flash of apprehension. He was worried about purchasing the national magazine, desperate for some measure of anonymity. Price Check, Mr. Phelps. His active mind held an inner dialogue, hoping he wouldn’t have to hand the clerk a card with his name on it.

“I’m like, ‘Don’t pay with a credit card,’ ” Phelps said. “ ‘Please have enough cash, so I don’t have to pay with a credit card.’ I did have the cash.”

Such is life under scrutiny, now an exact year to the day to the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Eight medals at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, six of them gold, and another sublime performance at the world championships in Melbourne, Australia, this spring (seven gold medals, five world records) has meant the face of the upcoming Games is decidedly in acceleration mode.

Call it the Phelps Factor.

He has helped to turn swimming into a marquee event, and his impact on the Beijing Games has already been felt.

The swimming finals, for example, are being held in the morning Beijing time instead of the traditional evening slot to accommodate NBC’s insistence that the event be shown live in the U.S. in prime time.

The sport’s rising status also has meant promotional trips to China for Phelps since the world championships ended in April, including one this week.

You might say elevating a sport is a marathon process, not a mere 50-meter sprint, even for someone blessed with a formidable wingspan, as Phelps is. Still, he has noticed the heat building around him.

“Progress is rising -- a year out of Athens, and I don’t think my face and my picture was on the cover of Men’s Journal,” Phelps said. “I really do think over time things will change. But it’s not going to be in the next four or five years.”

The 22-year-old Phelps will have two more cracks at the ultimate prize -- referring, of course, to his pursuit of icon Mark Spitz and those record seven Olympic gold medals. His plan is deceptively simple: two more Summer Games in what would be his prime, first in Beijing, and then London in 2012, pulling down the curtain on his Olympic career.

Phelps, during an interview with The Times at an Italian café in late June, was emphatic that he would not forge ahead to the 2016 Games. Even if the Games were awarded to Chicago, he told his coach, Bob Bowman, that four Olympics would be more than enough.

“London will be my last one -- 2016 is a long way away,” Phelps said. “Nine more years. I couldn’t do it. I told Bob, I will not swim when I’m 30 years old.

“I would have liked 2012 in New York City. If they had gotten it, I would have done my last meet, my last event on American soil -- 2016 is a long way away. I don’t think Bob and I could make it nine more years. We’ve been going at it. . . .”

Nine more years? There were times people wondered whether the often volatile and complex relationship could last nine more minutes.

“When you’re together that long and you’re two really headstrong people, you butt heads,” Bowman said. “And Michael, quite frankly, as a child and even today as an adult, he’s not the easiest person to get to do what you want him to do sometimes.”

Bowman was talking in his office next to the pool at the University of Michigan. But Beijing was never far from sight. At the far end of the pool was the ubiquitous countdown clock : 409 days 12 hours 52 minutes. . . 22 seconds.

This clock, though, is hardly necessary to motivate Phelps.

“I have a lot of tools I can use -- sometimes a sledgehammer,” Bowman said. “The good thing is Michael is motivated by many things. He’s one of the rare people that he’s motivated by failure. He’s motivated by success, motivated by congratulations, motivated by stupid comments.”

Or even Libby Lenton in the opening leg of a friendly mixed 400 relay at Duel in the Pool in April in Sydney, Australia.

“I remember going down the first lap, and she was kind of right at my shins,” Phelps said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is not good.’ I knew she would jump up on the lane line and kind of drag, the smart way to do it. I remember I was going right into the 50 wall, and I turned and went completely on the other side of the lane.”

So there.

Even when motivation was lost -- Phelps was keenly disappointed at not getting to race the now-retired Thorpe in the 200 freestyle -- he found it elsewhere, swimming in Thorpe’s homeland at the world championships where he took out Thorpe’s world record at that distance. He also appeared to chase a downcast Van den Hoogenband out of future 200 freestyles.

“This was the first meet he used his energy unbelievably well,” Bowman said of Phelps. “Also, what I thought was most interesting, he didn’t swim the same races, the same way he always swims. He won from way in front. He won close races. He won from relaxing early. He just switched it up on people, and I think that really helped him and I think it was really hard on the competition.

“I think it was really hard on Pieter van den Hoogenband.”

Bowman has shown an uncanny touch of creativity even at lesser meets. Evidence of his feel for the right move at the right time was on display as recently as last week at the USA Swimming National Championships in Indianapolis.

He handed Phelps a heavy workload at the onset, seven individual events and three relays. Later, Bowman pulled back one relay and then made a deal with Phelps on the second-to-last day of the meet. If Phelps broke 54 seconds in the 100-meter backstroke and 1:45 in the 200 freestyle, Bowman would let him skip his final individual race, the 200 individual medley on the final day.

The all-powerful incentive? A rare chance to sleep in.

Phelps did the double, and despite limited emphasis on backstroke training, threatened Aaron Peirsol’s record in the 100, recording the second-fastest time in history, going 53.01. Earlier, he had a personal best in the 200 backstroke, swimming the third-fastest time, 1:54.65.

And just like that, those twin backstroke performances opened up his Olympic event program to new choices. Then there was his powerful opening leg of 48.42 in the 400 relay at the world championships, the third-fastest time in the 100 in the world in 2007. That ended any second-guessing in regard to the relay, which Phelps faced in 2004.

His close friend and training partner at Club Wolverine, Erik Vendt, was talking about numbers that were inconceivable even a few months ago.

“He really can pick from 10 events now, whichever ones he wanted to do,” Vendt said. “He probably could realistically -- if he wanted to -- he could do 10 events.”

Today is almost symbolic in Olympic circles starting the one-year-out drumbeat with a rush of activity. Phelps is scheduled to be on NBC’s Today Show, and the national media will start making the same pilgrimages to Ann Arbor that were made to Baltimore four years ago when Phelps still lived at home with his mom.

Now, he lives in a town house in downtown Ann Arbor but remembers how he had to quickly adjust to being on his own.

“When I first got here, I walked into my house,” Phelps said. “It’s just me, ‘OK, what do I do now? Play video games by myself? Do I watch TV? Do I go to bed? Do I go to someone else’s house?’ ”

Said Bowman: “I think he’s sort of come to grips with living on his own, having the freedom, making choices and living with the consequences.”

Phelps’ passion and great escape the last couple of years has been poker, just across the border at the casino in Windsor, Canada. Naturally, he is working and thinking of ways to improve his game with an eventual goal of playing in the World Series of Poker.

“For the last year and a half, I’ve gotten a lot better,” he said. “One of my best friends. . . we both play at the same table. We’re both the youngest guys there. . . the same group of eight or nine people.”

The folks at the border crossing at the tunnel connecting Detroit to Windsor are almost like the gang in the old TV show “Cheers.” Of course, everyone knows his name.

“It’s an easy commute. You know all the people that work there,” he said. “You always see the same faces. They never hassle me. At the border, I’ve seen almost every person at the border when I go over, ‘Oh, Mr. Phelps, how’s it going? How’s the gambling going? How’s the poker going?’ ”

Could be an interesting question after Beijing: Do you have anything to declare Mr. Phelps?

Will the answer be six, seven or eight gold medals?

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lisa.dillman@latimes.com