Throwback Thursday: Ryan Lochte Sets Landmark 200 IM World Record in Classic Duel With Michael Phelps

Ryan Lochte -- Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

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Throwback Thursday: Ryan Lochte Sets Landmark 200 IM World Record in Classic Duel With Michael Phelps

On the first day of the World Championships, Leon Marchand wiped out the last individual world record that Michael Phelps set during his incredible career, swimming a time of 4:02.50 to knock more than one second off Phelps’ 400 IM record of 4:03.84 from the Beijing Olympics. And now that Marchand has also collected a world title in the 200 butterfly, he goes for the triple in the 200 IM, a race he enters as defending world champion.

Can Marchand add a second medley world record to his collection? That answer will come Thursday evening in Fukuoka, with Marchand seeded first for the final ahead of Great Britain’s Duncan Scott and the United States’ Carson Foster.

The record Marchand is chasing is another highly-acclaimed standard, a time of 1:54.00 that Ryan Lochte established 12 years ago at the World Championships in Shanghai. This race marked perhaps the best of the many duels between Lochte and Phelps during their legendary careers, and the result was the first long course world record set since the banning of full-body polyurethane suits 18 months earlier. And the record has survived since, with no swimmer aside from Phelps and Lochte coming within one second.

It was a tough field awaiting the two Americans that day in Shanghai, with Hungarian IM stalwart Laszlo Cseh, winner of 13 World Championship medals in his career, counted among the finalists along with Olympic medalists Thiago Pereira of Brazil and Markus Rogan of Austria. But no-one ever expected anyone aside from Lochte and Phelps to challenge for the gold.

As expected, Phelps was out first after the butterfly, turning six hundredths clear of Lochte before his rival took over on backstroke. That was no surprise as Lochte would clinch a world title in the 200 back the next day, but the lead was less than two tenths with Lochte at 53.48, Phelps at 53.67. On breaststroke, Lochte seemingly opened up a lead, only for Phelps to battle back in the final few strokes to close within three tenths. At this point, Pereira was in third place but two seconds back.

Through the 150-meter mark, neither man had dipped under world-record pace. Lochte already owned the record at 1:54.10, set on his way to gold two years earlier in Rome. In the year after his eight-gold-medal performance at the Beijing Olympics, Phelps had eschewed individual medley racing altogether in 2009, and indeed, he lost his world record in the short IM race to his longtime rival. Entering the Shanghai Worlds after the long course world record drought had reached 18 months, there had been conversation about this mark being the first to drop with both Americans on the chase.

Ryan Lochte (left) and Michael Phelps in 2016 — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

And on the freestyle leg, chase the record they did. Lochte was 0.23 behind his record split with 50 meters to go, and an excellent turn and breakout gave Lochte a half-bodylength lead. With 25 meters remaining, his fingertips came in contact with the red line superimposed on top of the pool representing the record. Maybe it was possible.

But Phelps was not done. Of course not. Phelps was charging, and over the last five meters, he began reeling in Lochte. If the race had extended for just a few additional meters, Phelps probably would have gone ahead to win gold. But instead, Lochte got to celebrate the gold and a time one tenth quicker than his previous world mark.

Also swimming a lifetime best that evening: Phelps. His 1:54.16 was seven hundredths quicker than his gold-medal time three years earlier in Beijing.

Interestingly, despite his long tenure as world-record holder and his eventual four consecutive world titles in the event from 2009 through 2015 (a record at the time), Lochte never won Olympic gold in the 200 IM. Instead, Phelps became the first male swimmer ever to win three consecutive Olympic golds in 2012, and four years later, he became the first swimmer of either gender to win four straight. Lochte would have had a chance of dethroning Phelps in 2008 and a very real one of winning in 2012, but in both Games, he swam the 200 back final just a half-hour before the medley, compromising his form ahead of the matchups with Phelps.

Now, it has been seven years since either Lochte or Phelps has raced internationally, but these two men still combine to hold the top 16 times in history. No one else has ever broken 1:54, with Wang Shun coming the closest with his 1:55.00 winning swim at the Tokyo Olympics. Surely, Marchand will join that club in Fukuoka after his 1:55.22 last year made him the fifth-fastest swimmer ever.

However, when Lochte’s world record does go down, either in Fukuoka, at next year’s Paris Olympics or after that, we still need to remember that performance as the one that showed the world that polyurethane records were beatable and that this race was the best ever between two all-time greats.

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