Phelps off to winning start at Worlds
ROME - Michael Phelps had an off night. His new windmill stroke just slowed him down. He left his teammates with some catching up to do. Heck, he didn't even get a world record when about all you had to do was squeeze into one of those newfangled suits and dive in at the Foro Italico.
Yet, when it was done, Phelps found himself in that same ol' place - top of the medal stand.
At his first major meet since a historic Olympics, Phelps got off to a winning start at the world championships as part of the 400-meter freestyle relay Sunday. He was actually the slowest member of the team, but the guys picked him up and beat the French again, just as they did in that memorable race last summer in Beijing.
"The best thing about this relay was they carried Michael," said Bob Bowman, Phelps' coach and also in charge of the U.S. men's team. "We need the other people to step up."
They sure did - especially Nathan Adrian on the anchor leg. His blistering down and back was reminiscent of Jason Lezak's amazing swim at the Olympics, when he somehow chased down Alain Bernard, touched first by eight-hundredths of a second and kept Phelps on course to win a record 8 golds.
"Relays are raced as a team," Phelps said, "and I think all four guys swam a great race."
Phelps was third when he passed off to Ryan Lochte, who hung tough against the hulking Bernard while surprising Russia surged into contention. Matt Grevers did his part on the third leg, and Adrian finished it off with fastest split of anyone to touch in 3 minutes, 9.21 seconds.
A half-dozen marks were set on the first night of swimming - two of them in semifinal heats, two more in one race, a staggering figure that shows just about every record is in danger over this eight-day meet.
Among the records going down: an iconic mark in the men's 400 freestyle held for seven years by Australian great Ian Thorpe. Germany's Paul Biedermann shot down the "Thorpedo" with a time of 3:40.07, breaking his long-standing mark by a hundredth of a second.
An even older world record by Inge de Bruijn, which had stood the test of time since the 2000 Sydney Olympics, also went down. Sweden's Sarah Sjostrom got that one in the semifinals of the 100 butterfly, her time of 56.44 erasing the mark of 56.61.
American Ariana Kukors, who didn't even qualify for the 200 individual medley at the U.S. trials but got in when a teammate scratched, now holds the fastest time ever in that event.
She, too, did it in a semifinal heat - wearing another of the new-age suits, the Jaked, when she went 2:07.03 to easily beat Stephanie Rice's record of 2:08.53 that won gold in Beijing.
The record book was so worthless that two marks fell in a single race. Germany's Britta Steffen was credited with a world record of 52.22 in the 100 free for her opening leg of the 400 free relay, but the Netherlands came back to win the race - with a record-breaking time, of course: 3:31.72.
In fact, runner-up Germany and third-place Australia also broke the previous mark of 3:33.62.
Torres swam the relay for the Americans, but she was already more than two seconds behind by the time she dove in the water on the second leg. The U.S. wound up a distant fourth.