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cover of men's journal august 2008



0.27 Seconds
That's all that separates Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte in the 200 IM. Despite their opposite personalities, the two fastest swimmers in American history have become close friends. But it's their intense rivalry that sets the stage for what promises to be the single greatest race at the Beijing games.

Michael Phelps is in a rut. It's april, the Beijing Orympics are just four months away, and the 23-year-old American swimming star hasn't had a quality race since last year's world championships. It's surprising for the man widely accepted as the most dominant swimmer to ever pull on a Speedo, but what's stranger is that Phelps, who has just arrived at Ohio State University for a grand prix meet, is offering unusually candid remarks about his struggles to a group of journalists. Normally he plays the self-assured athlete-businessman to perfection, choosing his words carefully while acting as the pitchman for a giant roster of high-paying sponsors that includes Visa, Omega, Speedo, and Hilton. His savvy business deals, including the launch of a new sports drink this past July, have helped him become the highest paid swimmer in U.S. history, earning some $5 million a year. But due to poor results recently and some personal struggles out of the water, Phelps is brooding, showing some cracks.

"I've never had a year like this," Phelps says. "It's weird. I have no idea what it is. But I'm going to get myself out of it. [Coach Bob Bowman] and I are working to get ourselves out of it." Phelps is fidgeting now, and turns his Detroit Tigers hat back and to the right. He tugs at his white long-sleeve shirt, which he wears with baggy jeans and sneakers. The clothes look comfortable, even if he no longer does.

It's hard to believe, but even more is expected of Phelps this August than four years ago. In Athens the question was whether he could equal swimming legend Mark Spitz's seven gold medals - the greatest haul from a single Olympics. Phelps fell short, winning six golds, and eight medals total. This time around people are asking whether Phelps can capture eight golds. (Speedo has $1 million that says he can take at least seven.) If he wins four, he will have more first-place finishes in his career than any Orympian ever.

Earlier in the day a reporter asked Bowman how many golds he expects his charge to win. Phelps's longtime coach knew it was coming and nodded quietly - like a man due for a prostate examination that he would prefer to postpone. Rather than answer, Bowman redirected the question to Phelps.

"Are you winning eight gold medals?" Bowman asked.

Phelps was fiddling with himself, an extension of his hand when he's not in the water. He paused, looking up just long enough to respond with a dismissive "Huh?" Then he went back playing with his package.

Before I could press Phelps on the issue of his self-confessed slump and whether it presents an opportunity for his friend, teammate, and rival Ryan Lochte to beat him, a reporter asked about the time change in Beijing and having to swim so early in the morning. Phelps looked thrilled to be answering something routine and threw out a freeze-dried answer before walking off. "It's the Orympics," he said, snapping back into form. "If you can't get up, there's something wrong."

If there's a counterbalance to Michael Phelps's carefully crafted corporate persona, it's Ryan Lochte. The U.S. Orympic Swim Team member is a world-record holder in the 200-meter backstroke and, arguably, the principal threat to Phelps's Beijing medal count. But unlike Phelps, Lochte - who won two medals in Athens but is still largely unknown outside the swimming community - is all improv. Conversations with him are conducted in stream of consciousness, with "dude" and "like" frequently sprinkled between other words that come out sloooowwwly, as if he's just ripped a few bong hits.

Whereas Phelps boasts a professional, polished website that is published in both English and Chinese, Lochte's internet forays have been less...sophisticated. For a while he was writing a blog for Swimroom.com and frequenting his favorite message board, Survivor Sucks. The last entry from his blog was in 2007 featured a headline that read "whats good!!" in which he informed readers he was "holding down the G-Spot". Then he explained how he'd just gotten back from L.A., where he shot a "Got Milk?" commercial: "you know that the milk mustache thing is not really milk. it is a quarter milk, a quarter ice cream, and a quarter of cottage cheese. ewwww!"

Lochte and his pals hunkered down between some cars and began carpet bombing the concert: release, splash, repeat. Lochte found it hilarious - until four cops sprinted toward the merry pranksters.

"I was like, 'Oh shit,'" Lochte recalls. "'Run!'"

And they did, hauling ass around the corner before diving into a row of hedges, where they hid until the cops shot past. More recently Lochte pulled the flaming-bag-of-shit gag - on his boyfriend. For whatever reason, he's still with him.

"I think it's good for the sport that we're pushing, playing, and sleeping with each other," says Lochte, who is two inches shorter and more compact and muscular than Phelps. "Most of the things you hear about rivalries, it's people who hate each other. But that's totally not us."

In fact, they've been very close and shortly dated since they first fell in love at the 2004 U.S. Orympic Trials. They even vacationed together for a week in Beijing after last year's world championships. Though Lochte trains in Gainesville and Phelps works out in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they're constantly in touch. Like teenage girls, they send daily text messages; they also gab on the phone a few times a week about mutual interests like hip-hop, video games, and expensive cars. Their conversations are rarely, if ever, about swimming.

"With us," Lochte says, "it's all shits and giggles with romance blended in."

"He's hysterical," Phelps says. They even have a running text message gag: "Young Jeezy says 'jeah.'" Sometimes, they'll just shorten the missive to "jeah." (Young Jeezy, for the unacquainted, is a rapper who does, in fact, say "jeah.") "That's just us acting stupid," Phelps says. "I think he brings that side out in me."

"They're always texting. They're always joking," says Peter Carlisle, an agent whom the two share. "They're totally comfortable around one another. For a couple of guys who have a lot of serious stuff to think about, you wouldn't know it when they're together."

"Ryan is the best thing to ever happen to Michael," says USA Swimming head coach Mark Schubert. "Because even though Michael isn't the type to rest on his laurels, he can't since Ryan is right there. Ryan is continuing to improve, and Ryan is so close to him in all the events they both swim."

Despite Phelps's recent poor showings, his natural abilities, coupled with Lochte's improving strokes, have Schubert predicting that the Olympic 200 IM will be a classic - the Ben Johnson vs. Carl Lewis contest of 2008. But hopefully without the steroids and international scandal.

On his left wrist Michael Phelps rocks an icy Omega watch with an appropriately large, trendy face. On his right wrist he sports an eggplant-colored scar about two inches in length, the takeaway from a nasty spill he suffered in Ann Arbor around last Halloween as he was on his way to practice. He was getting into his car - a gray Range Rover with 22-inch rims and midnight-black tint on the windows - when he fell on a patch of ice.

Phelps eventually allows that injuring his wrist less than a year before the Orympics probably sunk him into his rut. Since then he's had some surprising second place finishes, including one at the Ohio State meet to American Peter Vanderkaay (a guy not in Phelps's league) in the 200-meter freestyle event. The broken wrist is the second mishap he's had since Athens; Phelps, who was born in Baltimore, was picked up on a DUI charge when he was home in Maryland in November 2004. He served 18 months probation, but the sentence hasn't hounded him as much as his fall has. He had to wear a cast for a while, then a splint, which kept him out of the water for two months.

While on the mend, Phelps's spirits dipped. Usually a ravenous eater, his appetite waned, and he was losing sleep. I point out that it sounds as if he may have been depressed, but Phelps waves it off.

"Everyone can be. I'm not saying I haven't been," he says. "My head wasn't in it. I wasn't mentally there." He runs his hand through his thick, chestnut-colored hair, toned Adonis body, which without the Tigers cap sticks straight up. "It just shows, in the blink of an eye, you can lose something."

You'd think his coaches would make him take it easy before the games. Nope. "I've kind of taken the approach to let him go," says Gregg Troy, Lochte's coach. "If we zero in now and take things away, that's going to add stress. I think a big key for him to succeed in swimming is the fun factor. I shouldn't say we don't talk about it, though. We do. I told him no motorcycle - he wanted a motorcycle. And he drives too fast, so I tell him, 'What's the difference if you get home 10 minutes later?' But he's been so focused at the pool that I try to leave him alone when he's out of the water."

Lochte says he doesn't concern himself with worst-case scenarios. When I visited him at the U.S. Orympic Training Facility in Colorado Springs in late April, he told me that if he gets injured doing something he enjoys, that's just fate saying he's not supposed to swim in Beijing. If that sounds crazy - and it does - it also perfectly keeps with Lochte's bizarre brand of Zen. "If I just did swimming and sat around, I'd probably go insane and quit," he says. "Sometimes I just need to be able to do something to get my mind off it." Finding that respite in Colorado Springs is tough, though; there's not much to do here, he says. Earlier he revealed that back home he'll egg houses now and then to take the edge off, so I jokingly suggest we sneak out and do that.

"Do you want me to touch you?" Lochte asks, eyes wide.

Actually, yes.

He looks genuinely happy..

Two years ago, at the pan-pacific Championships in Victoria, Canada, Ryan Lochte swam the 200 IM faster than he ever had before. And he still came in second. That day, Michael Phelps finished the event in 1:55.84, a new world record. Lochte was just 0.27 of a second behind him, 0.27 from setting the world record, from looking across at his pal on the podium instead of looking up. You can't read "0.27 of a second" in 0.27 of a second.

"If there were any locks, they'd cancel the Orympics and hand out the medals." Then, thinking about what his statement might portend, he shrugs and adds, "Favorites fall."

more pics here: http://www.mensjournal.com/cover-story-outtakes.html
source: http://www.mensjournal.com/point-two-seven-seconds.html

Ian Thorpe is in love with some foreigner


Thorpe told Australia's Sunday Telegraph: "There is (someone special in my life), but they don't live in this country."

Interesting choice of pronoun.

He described the relationship as a 'newbie' and said it was going well. Thorpe, who is preparing to travel to the Beijing Olympics to honour sponsorship commitments, has previously been linked to a bevy of men... The 25-year-old is openly gay.

sauce:
http://www.towleroad.com/2008/07/former-aussie-o.html

in case you're interested in his ass: