Before Friday, 52 seconds seemed to haunt Michael Phelps.
“Literally seeing 52.11, 52.13 over and over and over and again …” Phelps said, the thought trailing off and seguing into another.
In his fourth meet since his return from retirement, the Olympic swimmer finally broke the 52-second barrier in the 100-meter butterfly at the Bulldog Grand Slam, outswimming competitor Ryan Lochte for first place with a time of 51.67 seconds. Lochte finished in 53.08 seconds.
“Thank God I didn’t see 52,” Phelps said. “I guess that’s a good start.”
Although his finishes in those first three meets were met with frustration, Phelps said his approach to swimming the second time around is significantly more relaxed and enjoyable.
Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman couldn’t help but laugh at the thought.
“And the times have gone,” Bowman interjected, laughing and gesticulating what could only be described as a steep slope downward.
“It’s not over, is it?” Phelps asked jokingly.
As his own tough critic, Phelps would have preferred finishing with the No. 1 time in the world, but described finishing 23 one-hundredths off Thomas Dal’s 51.44 No. 1 time as “a decent swim.”
“I am very pleased with being able to go 51, but in the grand scheme of things, I think it’s just a small steppingstone to hopefully going to where we want to be,” Phelps said.
Phelps entered Friday’s event content with his morning swim, but didn’t have the same satisfaction with his stroke during the 100 butterfly A-final. Cognizant that his best swims come down to 16 strokes in the first 50 and 18 in the second, Phelps knew Friday’s race didn’t go exactly how he would’ve liked.
“He’s used to hitting it on 16, so he’s at 16, but he’s not at the wall yet,” Bowman said.
Getting more distance for stroke and working on his turns will only help Phelps’ times improve, but Bowman and Phelps said Friday’s race showed significant improvement since his first meet after he announced his comeback from retirement, in Mesa, Ariz.
“(In) Mesa, I took my last stroke at the flags,” Phelps said, evoking a roar of laughter from the media. “I’m not kidding. … It was the worst.”
The 51.67 finish in Athens now stands as the No. 3 time in the world. Phelps finished the 100 butterfly in 51.21 for gold at the London Olympics in 2012.
Now that Phelps’ 100 butterfly is back in that 51-second range, the pressure has eased up, but only by a little. Even so, Phelps said his outlook on those frustrations after his brief stint in retirement have certainly changed.
“It’s not kicking and screaming,” Phelps said about his newly adopted philosophy. “It’s not pulling hair and pulling teeth.”
As long as Phelps doesn’t see the number 52 lit up in red above him, that attitude will continue.
“There’s a lot more smiling on the pool deck now than I think there was in the past.”
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