FISH OUT OF WATER

So, for a 19th birthday present, what do you give a wave-making, record-breaking swimming phenomenon who has everything -- all the strokes, all the explosiveness, all the world’s attention -- up to but not including fins and gills?

Debbie Phelps had a thought: How about a leisurely cruise around Baltimore harbor?

Debbie’s son, Michael Phelps, has made his reputation in the water. Why not a little relaxation on top of it?

Bob Bowman, Phelps’ longtime coach and possibly too avid a fan of “Gilligan’s Island,” had a question for that question.

“What if a storm comes up?” Bowman said to Debbie Phelps.

Just like that, Michael Phelps -- owner of three individual world records, pursuer of Mark Spitz’s unequaled mark of seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics -- was landlocked. There would be no three-hour tour.

Cruise, out.

Steakhouse, in.

Debbie Phelps laughs as she tells the story, which happened in June. Who wouldn’t laugh? Her son is the goggled, chlorine-drenched face of the Athens Olympics, already a Sports Illustrated cover man and the star of a television commercial showing Phelps churning laps across the Atlantic Ocean.

If anyone in Baltimore could handle a summer harbor storm, the list would have to start with Phelps.

Yet Bowman’s cautious reflex reflects the state and packaging of Michael Phelps Inc. And if bubble wrapping it and slapping on a handle-with-care tag wasn’t enough, Bowman joked about another option the day before Phelps’ first race at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials in Long Beach last month.

“If I can get him back to that hotel right now and lock the door and not let him out till tomorrow morning, my job is over,” he said, smiling.

Lockdown or not, Phelps emerged the next day and broke his world record in the 400-meter individual medley. He won three more individual events, finished second in two others and it took world records to beat him in the 200 backstroke and 100 butterfly. Though he qualified in a record six individual events, Phelps will swim five in Greece and could be on as many as three relays.

Spitz told Phelps during the trials he thought Phelps had the chance to do it, matching the Moby Dick of records, the seven golds of Munich, and claiming the $1-million bonus carrot dangled by Speedo. When there’s so much talk about a swimmer redefining a sport, it’s understandable that Team Phelps gets a little nervous about the precious cargo.

Baseball, soccer and lacrosse got left behind long before he hit high school and made the 2000 Olympic team at 15, finishing fifth in the 200 butterfly in Sydney. Dreams of joining his buddies on the football and golf team never got past the conversation stage with his mother and Bowman.

“I think it was more of just a laugh; I’m not too coordinated in other sports, so it would have been kind of funny,” Phelps said. “One of the only reasons I wanted to do it was because like every single one of my friends I grew up with was on the starting football team. I’m like, ‘Why not, give it a shot?’ Then I just decided, ‘No, probably not the best idea.’ ”

He didn’t toy with the idea to scare Bowman.

“Everything from going bowling one day would kind of do Bob in,” Debbie joked. “They’re a great team. We have a great support system.”

Handling Phelps’ rare kind of talent would make most men nervous. Bowman recalled a series of mishaps every time the water animal ventured onto land to run, generating nightmares.

“Every time I made him run for about five or six years, it ended in something where I don’t sleep for about three nights,” he said. “Because he falls, he does his ankle, he does this. He tries to run really hard and as soon as he does, he falls.”

This goes beyond the usual caution about it all unraveling in a fluke. Nearly everyone in swimming circles familiar with Michael Phelps’ meteoric rise also would be aware of his household history. For a brief moment, in between the Summer Sanders and Misty Hyman butterfly eras, there was Whitney Phelps. Whitney followed her older sister, Hilary, into the pool, and found success more quickly and on a higher level, winning a national title in the 200 butterfly at age 14.

She went into the 1996 Olympic trials at Indianapolis as the favorite in that event, seeded No. 1. She left with a sixth-place finish and holding no ticket to Atlanta. During the lead-up to the trials, Whitney carried a secret of a severe back injury, which she finally gave up when the family returned home from Indianapolis.

“I didn’t know she was injured. She wasn’t letting anybody in on that one,” Debbie said. “It wasn’t till after we got home she said, ‘Mom, I need to go to the doctor.’ I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘My back is killing me.’ She told me she was in practice and she wouldn’t even be able to do a flip turn.”

Though she earned a scholarship to Nevada Las Vegas, the bulging disks and stress fractures caused long-term ramifications, well beyond missing the Olympics and cutting short her athletic career. During the recent trials in Long Beach, Whitney said she was unable to swim without suffering pain afterward and still felt uncomfortable on long car trips and plane rides.

“It’s one of those things you can have surgery or it will get better on its own,” she said. “The chances of it getting better on its own are very slim and I didn’t want to get surgery. I got diagnosed at 15, and I didn’t want to run the risk of surgery going bad and being in a wheelchair. I swam here and there. My sophomore year in college I decided to stop and I haven’t touched the water since.

“I’ve been through every type of therapy that I think is out there.... I wish it would just get better.”

Michael Phelps was 11 when his sister suffered what turned out to be a career-ending injury. He told the Sydney Morning Herald about the experience, saying: “I think it killed the family.”

Years later, his sister’s silence taught him a lesson.

“She had this back injury and didn’t tell anybody or say anything to anybody, and over the years I’ve learned that if I’m hurting, I’m going to tell someone as soon as I start hurting,” he said in the November interview. “I don’t want the same thing that came up with her to happen to me.”

It wasn’t easy to watch her one-time peers take the next step toward greatness, and so Whitney didn’t, exiting the insular swim world by and large. Her bond with Michael brought her back to the pool.

“It was different being around the sport,” she said at the trials in Long Beach. “I hadn’t really been around it because of school. I’m here to watch him. It’s not about me or not about my swimming career. I’m here to support him.”

The missing family member in Long Beach was Phelps’ father, Fred, who is expected to be on hand in Athens. Phelps’ parents divorced years ago, and there have been periods of limited contact between Fred and Michael in the lead-up to the Olympics, according to various reports.

But there was no lack of unconditional support from the women in the family in Long Beach. For Debbie, sitting with her daughters was almost like having two articulate swim coaches alongside. Up high in the sponsors’ box in Long Beach, it offered a rare chance to listen to Whitney analyze Michael’s stroke.

“It’s fun to hear her critique his swimming,” Debbie said. “They’re like, ‘He’s looking a little tired in that first 50.’ ”

Tired for Phelps is fast for nearly everyone else. But who doesn’t become a swim critic when the Olympics come around? Phelps’ pursuit of Spitz has only intensified that attitude when he broke five world records last summer, including two within an hour, at the world championships in Barcelona, Spain.

Minor matters in 2002 turn into stories with legs in 2004. An event schedule may be a footnote in 2003, whereas Phelps’ Olympic program was breaking news on the Baltimore Sun’s website in the morning, and a full-scale news conference by lunch in Long Beach.

The individual event left on the shelf was the 200 backstroke. Phelps lost to Aaron Peirsol, who broke his own world record, going 1:54.74, and celebrated by turning into a human tsunami. Spitz, who was on hand in Long Beach, viewed the decision with curiosity, wondering why Phelps didn’t bypass the 200 freestyle and its world-record holder, Ian Thorpe of Australia.

“What I find surprising was dropping the 200 backstroke,” Spitz said recently. “The hype was to win gold medals. He’s much closer in the 200 back than he is in the 200 free, half second off the pace in the back and almost two full seconds off the [world record] in the 200 [freestyle]. Why did they have a revelation about all of this after and not before?”

He was not sounding a critical tone, merely a curious one. And you have to admire Phelps’ sense of drama and willingness to take on Thorpe in one of his signature events, underlining his oft-stated desire to transform the sport of swimming.

“So many sports have changed because of what people have done in the past,” Phelps said. “If you look at what Michael Jordan has done to basketball, people are still looking at that and what he did changed the sport.... Hopefully, something I do or something one of the other swimmers do will be able to change the sport for a younger generation.”

From a practical standpoint, his decision to downscale, if you can call it that, made sense, considering the heavy lifting Phelps would have had if he had kept the 200 backstroke. There could be as many as 18 swims in eight events in eight days in the Greek hothouse.

“It was more than the human body could take,” said Jon Urbanchek, who just retired as Michigan’s coach and is an assistant to U.S. Coach Eddie Reese.

They did not want Phelps to swim himself into the ground chasing Peirsol, who seems capable of bringing the record down a few more notches. Bowman said he couldn’t live with himself if the decision to do it all ended up compromising the 100 butterfly or 200 individual medley.

The seemingly indefatigable Phelps finally hit his limit when he completed a dizzying hat trick of races one evening at the trials, swimming the 200 backstroke final, winning the 200 individual medley final and completing his 100 butterfly semifinal in about an hour.

“I called it Black Monday,” Spitz said. “He was there every 30 minutes. One person said, ‘What do you think about that?’ I said, ‘If it were me, I’d have to remember what event I’m swimming. Two laps fly. Four laps back. Who’s on first?’ ”

In 1972, Spitz’s seven victories, all world records, came in four individual events and three relays.

In recent months, he has found himself debating individuals, some of them media members, about Phelps’ chances for seven or eight gold medals, noting that the teenager is only going to be getting stronger and faster, particularly in the shorter distances.

“Seven gold medals would put him on Mars,” Peirsol said of Phelps.

Reese offered more worldly perspective, saying: “It’s just a different era and he is a different swimmer than Mark. Mark was truly incredible. Michael Phelps is beyond that. His range and stroke abilities. He would have been in the top four or five in the 200 breaststroke had he swum it -- he is that good. That’s four strokes. We had Tracy Caulkins who held American records in all four strokes

The breaststroke is viewed as a weakness, but only in comparison to the other strokes. Urbanchek speculates that Phelps could drop his time three more seconds in the 100, which would have significant implications for his 400 individual medley. The coach is a good barometer of that race, considering he once coached Tom Dolan, the two-time Olympic champion and former world-record holder in the 400 individual medley.

“He’s not a born breaststroker, but he’ll get better,” Urbanchek said of Phelps. “He can get it down to 1:10 from 1:13, to drop the 400 IM to 4:06 in the near future. Dolan dropped 10 seconds from 4:20 to 4:10 in his career. His goal had been 4:08.”

In 2001, Phelps went 4:15.20 in the medley at nationals, and he has broken his world record at that distance three times, getting down to Dolan’s goal, going 4:08.41 at the trials.

Bowman spoke about an overlooked aspect of Phelps’ versatility.

“One of the things Michael has always had is natural speed,” Bowman said on the eve of the trials. “We’re training for the 400 IM all the time and he’s done the fastest 100 free in the U.S., one of the fastest in the world, unshaved, already.”

That particular attribute is coming into the equation because of a 400 freestyle relay controversy, which was sparked at the trials. Rivals Jason Lezak and Gary Hall Jr. were in rare agreement, saying Phelps should have to do a time trial to be included in the pool of candidates because he did not swim the 100 freestyle in Long Beach.

Bowman made it clear that Phelps would do no such thing. His argument was supported by Phelps’ 100 freestyle of 49.05 in February in Orlando, Fla., at nationals. That’s the seventh-fastest time in the world this year, according to FINA. Lezak is the only teammate with a better time in 2004 at 48.17, which happens to be the American record.

“If I were him, I wouldn’t want to get up for a time trial,” Spitz said.

The debate will intensify once the team arrives in Athens. And the makeup of the relay might not be known until shortly before the race, assistant coach Dave Salo said. That race could serve as a major momentum swing in the pursuit of Spitz’s record. Phelps’ signature race, the 400 individual medley, is on the opening day of swimming at the Olympics and the 400 freestyle relay is Day 2.

Of course, there is a big difference between two gold medals and one heading into the third and sizable challenge, the 200 freestyle against Thorpe, defending gold medalist Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands and Grant Hackett of Australia.

Thorpe has gone on record as saying he does not think the Spitz record can be matched. Though Phelps is fond of saying over and over he would be happy with one gold medal -- sounding more like a well-programmed line -- he was swift to take issue with Thorpe.

“I’ve heard that before. Everybody has their own opinion. I think he’s saying that he doesn’t think it’s possible for himself to do that,” Phelps said. “I don’t think I would say it’s impossible. Spitz did it, so obviously it is possible. So if something happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I’m at least going to try.”

The first meeting between Phelps and Spitz came in Long Beach when the legend was giving out the medals for the 200 butterfly, which was one of Spitz’s gold medals in Munich and is one of Phelps’ best events.

Spitz wasn’t sure what to do in this first meeting in the most public of places. But he had one correction for the youngster, recalling: “He called me Mr. Spitz. I said, ‘You can call me Mark.’ That’s the first thing we said.”

He gave him permission to change the greeting, and now Phelps can go on to reshape Spitz’s record and change the sport on an eight-day assignment in the water in Athens.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

MIKE’S MARKS

Swimming events in which Michael Phelps holds the world record:

200 BUTTERFLY

* 1:53.93 on July 22, 2003, at Barcelona, Spain

200 INDIVIDUAL MEDLEY

* 1:55.94 on Aug. 9, 2003, at College Park, Md.

400 INDIVIDUAL MEDLEY

* 4:08.41 on July 7, 2004, at Long Beach

**

STAY TUNED

Dates of finals of events that Phelps is competing in:

* 400 individual medley, Aug. 14

* 200 freestyle, Aug. 16

* 200 butterfly, Aug. 17

* 800 freestyle relay, Aug. 17

* 200 individual medley, Aug. 19

* 100 butterfly, Aug. 20

* 400 medley relay, Aug. 21

Phelps could be added to:

* 400 freestyle relay, Aug. 15