The Duke wrote:Phelphs will not gonna swim the 400m Free... and there are some talks that he might not even race the 400m IM again in the Olympics, cuz he needs to cut his program when he is older in 4 years. Again thats speculation on his part, cuz u dont know how u will feel in London 2012. But the timing of that event (1st swimming event of the games) is positioned so he can do it even when older, and not have it in the middle of the overall swim meet, where it is hugely physically draining.
He is not strong enough in breaststoke to compete in the 100m or 200m races, plus Japan's Kitajama (sp?) is dominating those races for the last 2 olympics... He concentrated on this stroke leading up to the olympics to ensure he took the 400 IM Gold, because Lochte almost beat him recently in that race.
For the Fly... his best stroke, he is already maxed out at the 100m and 200m... and there is no other distance... and you know that Serbian is gonna be fired up to take that away from him in London in the 100m distance.
For the backstroke... here is where I think he CAN add to his medal count. It will take some more contentrated training but I think he can compete in the 200m backstroke (prolly not the 100m backstroke tho) as he a very accomplished backstroker at present (and its a less taxing race physically)
The Freestyle .. is the king stroke and that will never change, no matter how much medals Phelphs can will in the other events. Theres a reason why the 100m Free is the most historical race in swimming... theres a reason why the 4x100m Freestyle Relay is MUCH bigger then the 4x100m Medlay Relay.
I will speculate that Phelphs might (just might), start training more sprint wise, and look to compete in this 100m Free in London.
Given all that... Phelphs is currently one of the best Olympians, but u need to compare him to the others in his era. Honestly tho, Bolt's performance is more shocking/impressive even tho his medal count will be lower. Possibily 3 gold medals in the 100/200/4x100 ... possibily all WR if they have solid exchanged in the relay... is better in my opinion for this olympics. But for Bolt to be called the better overall Olympian, he will have to domainate in London as well... i'm still hopeing he competes in the 4x400m relay finals in this olympics on the last day (he doesnt need to run the semi-finals which are the same day as the 4x100m finals the day before)
I really doubt he's going to add events in 2012, at that point if he could do 8 events and medal in them (regardless of whether he got gold, bronze, or silver) it would be mind blowing to get 8 medals in 3 straight Olympics. Even doing it twice is mind blowing.
If he had set out to get 9 golds in this Olympics I wonder how he could have done. I don't think it's inconceivable that he could have done the 200m backstroke and had a shot at gold in it without screwing up his other races, though he so narrowly won the 100m butterfly that I suppose even doing just 1 more event could have taken him from gold to silver in that event.
If he had done 8 gold and 1 silver instead of 8 gold and no silver would it seem more impressive or less impressive? In some ways it'd seem less which is kind of odd.
Anyway, I will be very interested to see what Phelps does in 2012. A dominant performance there would ice the cake when discussing him as one of the top 2-3 Olympians of all time. A so-so performance would leave some people making a case for him while others point to the amount of medal opportunities each year in swimming.
