By Phillip Whitten<\/p>\n
LONG BEACH, California, July 12. COMING into today\u2019s events, teen phenom Michael Phelps was halfway to his immediate goal: to win six individual events at the US Olympic Trials. He had set a world record in the 400 IM, beaten Klete Keller in the 200 free, and dispensed with defending Olympic champion Tom Malchow in the 200 fly.<\/p>\n
Today, the sixth day of the Trials, however, presented Phelps with his greatest challenge. He was swimming two finals against the reigning world record-holders in those events. Sandwiched in between, with just a handful of minutes to rest, was the 200 IM, in which Phelps is unchallenged. <\/p>\n
First up, the 200 meters backstroke. Seeded second behind world record-holder Aaron Peirsol, Phelps had placed second in both prelims and semis. Clearly a new strategy was in order: He would have to go out hard, stay with Peirsol, then rely on his devastating finishing kick to beat the University of Texas junior.<\/p>\n
But Peirsol anticipated his rival\u2019s change in strategy. \u201cI felt like I could go out faster and hold on. I\u2019ve had good easy speed here and I felt confident. My thought was if I could stay ahead the first 100, I would pull away and win.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s just what he did. Splitting 55.98 to Phelps\u2019 56.31, both men were under world record pace. But Peirsol had lots of fuel left in the tank while Phelps found himself falling back. He launched several attacks, but each time Peirsol responded, fending them off and lengthening his lead. At the wall, it was Peirsol in 1:54.74 \u2013 41-hundredths under his former world mark set over two years ago. Phelps was more than a second back at 1:55.86. <\/p>\n
Three other men went under two minutes, with Bryce Hunt third in 1:58.70.<\/p>\n
Explained Peirsol: \u201cI didn\u2019t expect to feel this way, but once you own a record it becomes your baby. You want to take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Phillip Whitten LONG BEACH, California, July 12. COMING into today\u2019s events, teen phenom Michael Phelps was halfway to his immediate goal: to win six individual events at the US<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n