Swimming's star power

BARCELONA -- If the men's 100 freestyle is the equivalent of a heavyweight fight, the 50 free is completely damn simple to understand. One lap. Raw power and speed. First one to the other side is the man. Thirteen years ago, two Americans, Anthony Ervin and Gary Hall Jr., tied for the gold medal at the Sydney Olympics in the 50 free, in a time of 21.8 seconds.

In what may have been the most loaded 50 free field ever, Brazil's Cesar's Cielo rocked it Saturday night at the Palau Sant Jordi in 21.32 seconds. Afterward, he cried -- and cried -- on the medals stand, the tears redemption after knee surgery and validation of his standing as one of the all-time sprint greats. The crowd roared.

The time, the field, the race, all of it underscored how swimming keeps getting better and better. Indeed, this 50 free produced a new star, Russia's Vlad Morozov, who won silver, in 21.47, even as it re-charged the career of one of the sport's leading lights, George Bovell of Trinidad & Tobago, who won bronze in 21.51, the island nation's first-ever world-championships medal.

The 50 free highlighted a day and night of extraordinary racing.

American Katie Ledecky, for instance, set another world-record, her second here, in winning the women's 800, in 8:13.86. She is so good that runner-up Lotte Friis of Denmark applauded as Ledecky got out of the pool.

Ledecky's 800 marked her fourth gold here in Barcelona. She also won the 400, 1500 and took part in the 4x200 relay. She took six seconds off the world-record in the 1500. Her 400 time was an American record.

When she gets home, she hopes to get her driver's license.

"I am thrilled," she said. "I exceeded my expectations for this year."

Her roommate at these worlds, Simone Manuel, who turned 17 on Friday, grabbed the final spot in the women's 50 free final Sunday by swimming 24.91; she is the first 18-and-under swimmer in U.S. history to break 25 seconds.

Missy Franklin won her fifth gold medal Saturday, in the 200 backstroke, her signature event, in 2:04.76. She is the first woman since Australia's Libby Trickett to win five gold medals at a world championships, and swims Sunday in the medley relay for a sixth.

No female swimmer has ever won six gold medals at a world championships. Franklin could join Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and Kristin Otto of East Germany as the only swimmers to win as many as six golds at the worlds or the Olympics. Otto won six golds at the 1988 Seoul Games.

Asked about six, Franklin said it would "mean so much to me" but cautioned about the medley, "Like every single race here, we are going to have very tough competition."

In the morning heats, Russia's Yulia Efimova set a world record in the women's 50 breaststroke, 29.78. The record lasted until the evening -- when Lithuania's Ruta Meilutyte went 29.48 in the semifinals.

The world records in the women's 50, 100 and 200 have all fallen at these 2013 championships -- stunning, because the plastic suits from 2008-09 were said to have helped the breaststroke most of all. The women's 50 breaststroke final is set for Sunday evening.

Ryan Lochte, the day after winning two medals and setting a personal best in the 100 fly semifinals, finished sixth in the men's 100 fly. South Africa's Chad le Clos, closing in the second lap just the way Phelps used to, won in 51.06.

"I don't know if it had an effect, the triple last night, but I just didn't have it," Lochte said.

Cielo for sure had it.

He won his third straight world championships title in the 50 free -- this despite surgery on both knees after the Olympics, and not even racing the 100 free.

The eight lanes of this 50 free final held three Olympic champions: Ervin, from 2000; Cielo, 2008; France's Florent Manaudou, 2012.

All eight guys had an Olympic medal. In all, there were 14 medals among the group -- seven gold, four silver, four bronze. Five of the eight had an individual medal.

To illustrate how the race has developed -- owing to advances in strength-training, straight-arm freestyle technique, a change in the racing blocks themselves and other factors -- Ervin finished Saturday in 21.65.

He took sixth.

"It happens," he said, adding, "I just felt incredible yesterday. Things were a little bit apart from that when I was going through my routine today. So, you know, I don't attribute it to much other than things didn't line up perfectly. I didn't get the strike. I got the spare. Whatever."

Nathan Adrian, the London 100 gold medalist, finished fourth, in 21.6.

He said, "21.6 would medal at most international competitions but the 50 was really fast this year,"  adding, "I have been saying this all week: training has become so specific for every single event. Vlad and I were the only ones who swam the 100 and the 50. Look at the results from 2000, and that's not going to be the same. It has become so specific. The more you specialize, the better you can become at any particular event."

In the semis, Manaudou had gone 21.37. He looked like the man to beat.

Instead, the race was all about Lanes 6, 7 and 8 -- Cielo, Morozov and Bovell.

Cielo had gone 21.76 in the prelims, then 21.6 in the semis.

But, as Cielo said late Saturday, there's a big difference between swimming the 50 and sprinting the 50. He reminded himself to swim "fast and long, fast and long," and that's what he did, keeping his head down. his stroke long: "When I saw the scoreboard, I was ecstatic. I had no idea where I was."

Morozov, 21, moved to Southern California from Siberia when he was 14. He ripped up the NCAA championships this year swimming for USC, taking down no less than Cielo's record in the 100-yard sprint, then turned pro. He turned in a 47.62 in the 100 at the Summer University Games a few weeks back.

Here, in the 100, he went out in the first 50 in 21.94 -- the first sub-22 split, ever, in any major international final. He finished fifth, in 48.01. "I wish I didn't go out as fast," he said ruefully.

In the 50 prelims, he went 21.95. The semis, 21.63.

In this race, there was no back half to worry about. Just 50 meters.

Morozov's 21.47 is a new national record -- beating the mark he set in the semis. He set it in front of Alex Popov, the former Russian sprint star -- who gave out the medals Saturday night.

"I'm really stoked with these medals," Morozov said, proving that seven years in SoCal is plenty long enough to learn to talk like a native. He also won a bronze medal as part of the 4x100 relay.

Morozov, noting that this was his first long-course championships at which he was swimming individual events, added a moment later, "To come here and get a silver medal already with guys who were in my heat -- they were already Olympic champions, world champions  … I am really stoked with that. In 2016 I will do my best so that no one will be close to me."

Sprinters, it must be noted, do not as a general rule lack for confidence.

"He's going to give us a lot of trouble in the next years," Cielo said of Morozov, smiling.

Bovell, meanwhile, won a bronze medal in the 200 IM -- behind Phelps and Lochte -- in Athens in 2004. After that, he hurt his knee and could no longer swim the breaststroke.

He re-made himself into a sprinter. He turned 30 two weeks ago and, as he said, "To be honest, when you get to be my age, there is some pressure to grow up, so to speak." A trip to these worlds without a medal, he said, would have put pressure on him to stop swimming competitively.

Now, he said, he intends to keep on through Rio. "I love swimming," he said. "I did not want to give it up."

An epic swimming triple

BARCELONA -- It is Ryan Lochte's fate that he was born in 1984 -- on August 3, to be precise. The good news is that it's his birthday on Saturday. Happy 29 to a guy who is a lot -- and, for emphasis, a lot -- smarter than a good many people think, and a lot more sensitive, who is incredibly gracious with children, autograph-seekers and photo-takers, and patiently answers all manner of questions, no matter how inane.

The unshakeable challenge for Ryan Lochte is that he is not Michael Phelps (who, by the way, turned 28 in June). So even on a night at the Palau Sant Jordi in which Lochte had demonstrated anew that he is unequivocally one of swimming's all-time greats, racing a triple believed to be unprecedented in world championships or Olympic history, Lochte was nonetheless presented at a late-night news conference with a query about Phelps.

"Do you miss Michael" he was asked.

"Do I miss Michael? Of course. He's the toughest competitor I have ever had to race against. The friendship we've grown -- it's amazing. I love a challenge. Whenever I stepped on the blocks, it was a challenge racing him, and I definitely miss him."

The general rule in a news conferences is that anyone can ask anything. Surely, though, on this night, Ryan Lochte deserved singular attention. He swam three races in about an hour and a half, winning two gold medals and posting the top time at an event, the 100-meter butterfly, he's competing in at a major international meet for the first time.

Lochte won the 200 backstroke. He then posted the fastest time in the semifinals of the 100 fly. The he put the Americans ahead for good in the 4x200 relay.

This was a triple of -- truly -- epic proportions.

It's all the more outrageous considering, as Lochte has noted several times here, he did not put in his usual beast-like training -- that because of all the fun he allowed himself after the 2012 Olympics, including his reality-TV show.

"My whole body is hurting me," he said at the news conference. "There's no way about it. I'm sore. Everything."

To show you how hard it is to gin up motivation to win even one medal at a world championships, in particular the year after the Olympic Games, here is Tyler Clary, third in Friday's 200 back, winner of the event last year in London.

Lochte touched Friday in 1:53.79, Clary in 1:54.64, Poland's Radoslaw Kawecki in between in 1:54.24. Clary said his "only goal" Friday was to "have a very good race technically" and swim "1:54-mid, and that's exactly what I did."

'It's hard to find the motivation to do it, yes," Clary acknowledged, adding, "I went into that event [in London] not expecting to win. I knew I was in contention for a medal but when I touched the wall and I saw '1' and 'Olympic record' next to my name, I absolutely lost it in the next couple weeks after that race. Pure pandemonium.

"And to be able to come back, right away, get right back in the water with your heart fully into it, is really tough. I made it doubly hard on myself coming back at 220 [pounds] when I usually swim at 190."

Now throw in, like Lochte, the demands of a filming a reality-show.

French sprinter Fred Bousquet, fifth in qualifying Friday in the men's 50 free, said of Lochte, laughing, "I don't even want to talk about him. He is a freak."

Bousquet, who went to college at Auburn and is completely conversant in American culture, added,  "He's got cojones, as we would say in Spanish. The TV show, the temptations -- not to lose enthusiasm. If he's still walking tonight after that relay, it'll be impressive."

Anthony Ervin, the Sydney 2000 50 free gold medalist who posted the second-fastest time in the one-lap sprint Friday, called Lochte's triple a "Herculean feat of strength," adding, "I can barely handle doing one lap twice in 12 hours. And that man is going to be on the podium every day."

Ricky Berens, who swam the anchor leg of the U.S. relay, called Lochte's performance "absolutely one of the toughest triples you can do," adding he was himself inspired: "If [Lochte] can do all those races, I know I can pop off something good, too."

The TV show of course, is called, "What would Ryan Lochte Do?" The obvious question after the triple -- why did Ryan Lochte do it?

There are two answers.

There was the joke Lochte offered at the news conference: "I thought as you get older you do less events. In my case you do more."

And then there's the real answer, buried in the answer he gave about Phelps. Lochte loves a challenge.

Phelps, for instance, swam three races in one session at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials -- the 200 back and 200 IM finals and the 100 fly semis -- and Lochte did the same thing last year at the Trials in Omaha.

This, though, is the worlds. And Lochte's program Friday is arguably beyond compare -- not just because he was defending world titles but because the level of competition was even a notch higher.

Here was Lochte's night:

613 pm: Lane 5, 200 back begins.

615 pm: Wins in 1:53.79, 15-hundredths faster than he swam in winning bronze in the race in London. The victory is his third straight world title in the event, the eighth straight time a a U.S. man has won it, his 14th world championships gold. He goes straight to the warm-down pool and swims a few laps.

653 pm: Medals stand for The Star-Spangled Banner.

704 pm: Call room, seat 4, front row, his warm-up jacket open, Lochte is yakking it up with Hungary's Laszlo Cseh. Lochte had managed after getting his medal to swing by the massage therapist's room and get a shake to drink.

713 pm: Dives in pool for his heat of 100 fly, Lane 1.

714 pm: Wins heat in 51.48, a personal best, second-fastest in the world this year, back to warm-down pool.

745 pm: U.S. 4x200 relay team is on deck, Lochte assigned second leg.

747 pm: Dives in pool, Lane 4, with U.S. looking to make up ground because Russia's Danila Izotov had opened in 1:45.14. Lochte's effort, 1:44.98, lifts U.S. into first by 63-hundredths of a second, and the Americans go on to win in 7:01.72. It was the first U.S. 4x200 relay without Phelps since 2001; the U.S. has won the event continuously since 2004.

After all the other swimming he had done, Lochte's relay split, it would turn out, would be the night's second-fastest.

Only China's Sun Yang -- the 400 and 800 gold medalist -- went faster, 1:43.16.

The relay gold makes Lochte the first swimmer in world championships history to win two gold medals in one day on three separate occasions. He did it previously on March 30, 2007, and July 29, 2011.

No matter what happens in the 100 fly, what happened here Friday sets the stage for the world championships in Kazan, Russia, in 2015, and the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Lochte said he approaches everything day by day, step by step. Even so, he said:

"After the Olympics, my body and my mind -- it needed some down time. It needed to get away from the sport. It needed to re-charge. I took some time off. I don't know if it was the right decision or not. I do know when I was out of the pool I was having fun."

But, he quickly added, "When it came down to it, I am still an Olympic athlete. My goal is 2016. I knew I had to get back in the water, sooner than I thought."

And, he said, "The confidence I have coming out of this meet is pretty good leading up to 2016."

You think?

The team's the thing

BARCELONA -- The world knows Michael Phelps. It knows Ryan Lochte, who won his third straight men's world championships 200-meter individual medley here title here Thursday night at the Palau Sant Jordi. It knows teen sensations Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky. They each won more gold medals Thursday, too, swimming legs of the 4x200 freestyle relay.

No, Phelps isn't swimming here. Even so, this deep U.S. team is still -- with five days down, three days to go -- dominating the medals count at yet another world championships, and the story of how Jimmy Feigen won silver Thursday in the men's 100 free offers revealing insight into the American way.

The U.S. swim team has 18 medals in the pool, 20 overall. Swimming is by definition an individual sport. But at big meets, it is also -- and the Americans understand this better than anyone in the world -- a team event.

It sounds simple. But it's not.

It's not just that the Americans have considerable talent. Of course they do. But it runs far deeper than that.

It's about creating, and sustaining, a team culture that promotes and inspires best performance.

As Cate Campbell, the outstanding Australian swimmer put it in a news conference here before the meet got underway, "When you go away, the swim team becomes your family. Healthy family -- healthy swimming. I think that has been really important."

Consider the way the Americans talked about each other after Thursday's racing:

Ledecky swam her first-ever leg on a U.S. relay, leading off that 4x200 swim. When she touched, the Americans were in first. She said the experience was "awesome," adding, "It meant a lot to get up and race with three girls behind me," calling it "definitely the most fun I have ever had in a race."

Karlee Bispo, who swam third, after Shannon Vreeland, earned her leg -- her first-ever start in an international final -- after a solid preliminary swim.

Bispo said, "To be with three Olympians, and amazing people, and to be able to represent my country, and look back and hear the 'U-S-A' chant and wear our flag on our suit and cap -- to win the gold medal is something I will never forget. I was trying to hide back the tears hearing the national anthem."

Franklin, winner of the 200 free Wednesday, swam another outstanding 200 -- 1:54.27 -- to ensure the victory.

She said, "Being a part of a team is the most important part of swimming for me, which is different, because a lot of people think of it as an individual sport. But when you get out there and you have three people who are not only your teammates but your friends -- that you know are going to support you no matter what -- you just have this whole new energy about you.

"And you want to go out there and race harder than you have ever raced before."

Lochte:

"I think one of the reasons why Team USA is so dominant is because we're what I feel like is -- we're like the one team that comes together. It's not separate. It's not a men's team. It's not a women's team. We help each other out. The guys help the girls out. The girls help the guys out. I think that's why we're so dominant -- we push each other. That's what makes a team."

In a different team culture, it might have been easy for Feigen's performance Sunday night in the men's 4x100 relay to make for a longstanding disaster.

Instead, it now looks like the kind of thing that obviously not just kickstarted him here but might well galvanize him to and through both the world championships in Kazan, Russia, in 2015 and the Rio Summer Games in 2016.

Which, by the way, is just the way the U.S. coaches planned it all along.

It's called trust and faith in him, and each other. That's what families do.

The relay rewind: handed the lead, Feigen went a too-slow 48.23. The French won.

What happened next?

A little back story:

Feigen went to college at Texas, where he won the 50- and 100-yard free at the 2012 NCAAs under the direction of coaches Eddie Reese and Kris Kubik. At the Summer University Games in China in 2011, he won the 100-meter free. Last year in London, he swam in the prelims of the 4x100 free relay that would ultimately win a silver medal.

Feigen qualified for these 2013 worlds by finishing second at the U.S. nationals in the 100 free. In him, the U.S. coaches, led by men's head coach Bob Bowman, see enormous upside.

That's why they dropped him into the anchor slot Sunday night in the 4x100 relay. It was his first major-league performance.

He would say late Thursday, "I'm still kind of a rookie to the whole world-circuit thing. I got a little bit of rookie nerves when it came to that relay. I kind of felt like I let everybody down. So I felt like it was my duty at this point to step up and show I do belong, I do belong with these swimmers."

Feigen is now 23.

After the relay, one of the people he sought out is Jack Roach, the U.S. junior national team coach, who is here with the American staff. Feigen and Roach have a history. It goes back to when Feigen was 9, at the University of Texas swim camps, and Roach was a coach there.

For that matter, virtually every swimmer who has come up in the American program has a connection not just to -- but with -- Roach. Here's one of the main reasons why: "I never," he said of his current role, "consider myself more than a consultant."

In this context, that means this: Roach is keenly aware that when this meet ends, Feigen is heading back home. Yes, there's a mission now. But Feigen has relationships with his coaches back home, too. What do families do? They look after each other, even across the oceans.

Feigen initially brought up this concern to Roach: if I swim faster in the 100, will people think I didn't try in the relay?

"We got off that relatively quick," Roach said, adding it was important to recognize that of course American swimmers "do feel a relay position is an honor and they never want to drop the ball in that situation."

Then the talking got down to real strategy -- how to best prepare for the 100 itself. "The second thing we discussed," Roach said, "was how would Eddie and Kris help you strategize the race."

Roach added, "When I'm dealing with someone else's athlete, I think it's very important that I let them know that they know themselves better than I know them. I like to provide them with questions they can ask themselves."

There was some technical talk. But, really, as Roach said, at this level, the preparation is "all mental."

"Everyone," Roach said, "strives to be a champion. When you're a champion, you're worthy. Sometimes you're worthy and you aren't a champion. What do you learn from every experience to become a little more worthy so you can move into that championship state? So much of it is accountability to the athletes who are in front of you."

Feigen's best 100 time before this meet in Barcelona: 48.24.

In Wednesday's semifinals, he went 48.07.

Then, in Thursday's final, 47.82.

Australia's James Magnussen -- out-touched by American Nathan Adrian by one-hundredth of a second last summer for the gold medal in London -- won the race, in 47.71.

Adrian took third, in 47.84.

The last time the U.S. men had won a world championships medal of any color in the 100 free? 2001, Anthony Ervin, gold.

For Magnussen -- who became the third Australian to win an individual discipline twice at the worlds, after Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett -- the win was about team and family as well: "We felt a little isolated last year. I felt like I had everyone's support this year. I felt like I was representing a team I was proud to represent this year, and that made my job a little easier."

For Feigen, too: "I started out a little shaky with this whole world championships thing but I think it's coming together in the end."

Finally, here's the reason Jack Roach is on staff in Barcelona, and is so integral to the American swim team's winning culture:

"I don't really feel like I can take much credit here," he said, and he's not being self-deprecatingly humble. He means it. "It's about the athletes Jimmy is surrounded with and the coaching staff back home and the support he gets."

As Ryan Lochte says -- jeah.

Missy's world - we just live in it

BARCELONA -- With the passage of time, and granted it has only been five years, the magnitude of what Michael Phelps accomplished in Beijing in 2008 becomes ever more evident. He set out to win eight gold medals. Inside the howl of noise that was the Water Cube, he won eight gold medals.

Records are of course made to be broken. But one wonders whether that 8-for-8 will ever seriously be tested.

Missy Franklin had come to Barcelona with the idea of perhaps trying for eight golds. It takes nothing -- again, nothing -- away from her brilliance and sheer exuberance to say that she now, after winning the women's 200 freestyle Wednesday here at the Palau Sant Jordi can "only" win seven, assuming everything else here at the 2013 world championships breaks her way.

The choice, after all, was completely hers.

Franklin realized after a demanding double on Tuesday that her best chance at winning the 200 free Wednesday night was to scratch Wednesday out of the 50 backstroke.

Math works like this -- you can't get to seven without getting first to three, and Franklin made it three-for-three Wednesday night in 1:54.81.

More math: It was her first time ever under 1:55.

More still: last year in London, Franklin missed out on a medal in the 200 free by one-hundredth of a second. Absolutely, missing out weighed on her.

"That was really rough, not making the podium -- just for my team. I really wanted to be up there for them. It was a really tough swim. I learned a lot from it and I don't think I would be here now without that swim. And so to be here now, and to go 1:54 -- I'm so happy."

Federica Pellegrini of Italy, the world record-holder in the event, took second in 1:55.14.

Pellegrini, who has consistently had a knack for the peculiar, disclosed after the race that she had trained for these championships solely by swimming backstroke and that her coach had convinced her only at the last moment to do freestyle.

Camille Muffat of France took third, in 1:55.72.

It must be remembered that Franklin just turned 18 in May. She will enroll at Cal-Berkeley after these championships.

Last year in London -- even with the near miss in the 200 free -- she won four golds and a bronze.

The victory Wednesday lifts her career world championship gold total to six. She won three in Shanghai in 2011. Here in Barcelona she took part in the winning 4x100 free relay on Sunday; she won the 100 backstroke on Tuesday.

In an era when so many sports figures can be such downers, Missy Franklin is the complete opposite. She is relentlessly optimistic, hard-working, the ultimate team-player -- pretty much everything you'd want if you were saying, who would I want my middle-school son or daughter to model themselves after?

This is why longtime observers of the swim scene such as Rowdy Gaines, himself a 1984 swim gold medalist, can hardly contain themselves when it comes to Missy Franklin. Now an NBC analyst, Gaines has heard it all, seen it all. Three times after her 200 free victory, he posted exclamation-point laden tributes to her on his Twitter feed. The last: "I can't help myself….Missy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It is an article of nearly religious faith among elite-level swimmers that swimming hurts. That's because, sincerely, it does. Most come into an interview and proclaim, ohmigosh, that swim hurt so bad. Missy Franklin never says that.

Here she was literally moments after her 200 win, talking about what it's like for her flipping at 100 meters:

"That's the hard part about a 200 -- it's when you really start to feel it. You have another 100 left. So you have to stay mentally tough. That's when you have to focus on your own swim. And as soon as you touch that wall, all that pain goes away because you know you tried your best, regardless of what the time is."

Franklin's strategy Wednesday was elegantly simple. The framework of the race, she said, was to stay even with Muffat in the first 100, then keep ahead in the final 100 of Pellegrini.

Even so, she said, the only sure path to victory was to swim her own race: "A lot of it was mental .. just being able to concentrate on my own race  and not getting caught up in what other swimmers around me were doing."

Having learned from last year's near-miss, she and coach Todd Schmitz had focused on pace work. That, she said, paid off.

And, she said, after a demanding double on Tuesday -- winning the 100 back, then swimming the semis of the 200 free -- it all seemed maybe just a little too much of a push, particularly after Wednesday morning's prelims, in which she finished 13th of the 16 qualifiers in the 50 back, at 28.44, nearly a full second behind the fastest qualifier, China's Fu Yuanhui, 27.55. The semis of the 50 back went down literally just minutes before the final of the 200 free.

Franklin had won a bronze in the 50 back in Shanghai.

If Franklin was perhaps a contender in the 50 back, she is so much more a favorite in the 100 free and the 200 back. The 100 free heats get underway on Thursday; the 200 back heats on Friday. There are two more relays to come as well.

Asked at a news conference Wednesday whether it occurred to her just how "amazing" it was  Phelps had gone 8-for-8, Franklin, as ever, laughed, and said, "Of course. I don't even need to do that [myself] to realize how amazing that was.

"Just swimming seven events, eight events, six events -- I mean, swimming that was incredible, let alone winning every single one of them. Not enough can be said about what Michael did in 2008. It was absolutely incredible and, you know, watching him become the most decorated Olympian of all time in London was also an unbelievable achievement.

"To be there to witness it was wonderful."

To win five medals in London -- that was pretty special, too, especially for a teenager. And three golds already in Barcelona, with more very likely to come -- someone alert Rowdy Gaines, because he is going to need more exclamation points before this week is done.

15:36.53 to make a change

BARCELONA -- It is 29 years since Joan Benoit ran the marathon at the Los Angeles Summer Games. Women now compete at the Summer Games in wrestling and boxing. At the 2012 London Games, every national Olympic committee in the world -- finally -- sent female competitors. The U.S. team was more than 50 percent female.

And yet there remains a curious anachronism. In swimming, one of the most progressive of sports, men -- only men -- race the Olympic 1500 meters. The longest distance in the pool on the Olympic program for women is 800 meters, as it has been since 1968.

There are moments in sports when you know you are bearing witness to something special -- to a moment that may change the way things are because, simply, frankly, that change is the right thing to do. On Tuesday night at the Palau Sant Jordi, American Katie Ledecky, Denmark's Lotte Friis and New Zealand's Lauren Boyle put on a performance that was, unequivocally, the best women's distance swim race of all-time and ought to immediately spur the addition of the women's 1500 to the Olympic program.

Like, right now. Without question or hesitation. There can be no doubt.

The women's 1500 is -- obviously -- on the world championships program. It has been since 2001. Friis, 25, won the event at the 2011 worlds in Shanghai. Ledecky, 16, won the Olympic 800 in London. Boyle, 25, is a Cal-Berkeley grad who finished fourth in London in both the 400 and 800.

Friis swam Tuesday in Lane 4, Ledecky in 5.

Boyle raced two lanes over, in Lane 7.

Before the race, many here suspected the world record -- set by American Kate Ziegler in Mission Viejo, California, on June 6, 2007 -- was going down.

As Jessica Hardy, who would later in the evening win a bronze medal in the women's 100-meter breaststroke, would say, swimmers can tell when a pool "feels" fast, and she said, "This pool definitely 'feels' fast."

Ledecky, in winning the 400 on Sunday in 3:59.82, became the first female in history to go under four minutes in a textile suit. Boyle took third in that race, in 4:03.89.

That Ledecky didn't break the 400 world record is something of a footnote. Italy's Federica Pellegrini holds the record, 3:59.15, but set that mark at the world championships in Rome in 2009, at the height of the plastic-suit era. To go under four minutes was a signal something truly remarkable was at hand.

That's because the 400 is arguably Ledecky's third-best event -- there being the 800 and the 1500 yet to come here in Barcelona.

With apologies to Brooke Bennett, not since Janet Evans -- and this goes back to the late 1980s and early 1990s -- has women's distance swimming seen anyone quite like Katie Ledecky.

Evans -- who was also a teen-age phenomenon -- said Tuesday by telephone it's obvious Ledecky, who projects quiet humility and decency, has extraordinary confidence. Evans said she had that same confidence at that age as well.

"As an athlete, you know every time and race it's not a question of if you're going to win a medal, it's how much you're going to win a medal by," Evans said. "She has three years to get ready for Rio," meaning the 2016 Summer Games. "It's the greatest sweet spot there is."

Evans added a moment later, "The hard part about this .. is that she now has a target on her back. I mean that in the most positive way. Great champions deal with that pressure. And she is a great champion. How much faster is she going to get? I mean, it is awesome."

Which is the word for the race that went down. Just -- awesome.

Ledecky and Friis raced, as the authoritative website swimvortex.com would later recite, through swim history:

-- At 100 meters, Ledecky was at 58.75, Friis at 59.15. This was the 100-meter world-record pace in 1971 of Australian Shane Gould.

-- At 200 meters, Ledecky was 66-hundredths of a second ahead. Now they were racing at the 200-meter pace set by East German Kornelia Ender in the mid-1970s.

From 300 to 1200 meters, Ledecky let Friis set the pace. Always, though, Ledecky stayed close.

-- At 400 meters, Friis held a 63-hundredths lead. She turned in 4:05.26. This was at Evans' 400-meter pace in 1987.

-- At 800 meters, Friis was up by just 17-hundredths. She flipped in 8:17.16. Both were now inside British racer Rebecca Adlington's world title pace in 2011.

For most of the race, meanwhile, both Friis and Ledecky cruised along about five seconds inside Ziegler's split times. Then, at 1300 meters, Ledecky brought the hammer. She turned first for the first time since 250.

By 1450, Ledecky had -- this is almost outrageous -- built a 1.07-second lead.

She then delivered -- even more outrageous -- a final lap of 29.47 seconds.

Her winning time: 15:36.53.

The executive summary: Ledecky crushed the world-record -- which had stood for more than six years, and withstood the insanity of the plastic suits -- by six seconds.

Also, she beat her prior personal best, 15:47.15, by nearly 11 seconds.

Friis also beat Ziegler's world-record, and by nearly four seconds. She touched in 15:38.88.

"It's just really nice to be part of the big races, really exciting, nail-biting races," Friis would say afterward.

Boyle, meanwhile, finished in 15:44.71. That would have been the best swim of 2012, and by 21 seconds. Until Tuesday, it would have been the best swim of 2013, by two-plus seconds. As it is, it set an area record -- an "Oceania championship" mark.

"I was quite surprised I could see [only] Katie's and Lotte's feet the last 500 meters," Boyle said, smiling, adding, "It's really an honor to race those girls."

Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps' longtime mentor, said afterward that Ledecky's 1500 was "as good as any swim Michael ever did -- ever."

Missy Franklin, who won the 100 backstroke Tuesday in 58.42 seconds, her second gold medal here, watched the 1500 from the ready room while readying for another race, the 200 free semifinals, and said, "I knew that world record was definitely going down tonight. But six seconds was absolutely incredible," adding, "All of us were totally in awe of the six seconds."

Ledecky herself, asked at a news conference by the moderator if she was prepared to be the "queen or prince of these championships," quickly demurred, as she typically does.

She said, "I am just really honored to be here and to be a part of the great swimming that is going on here."

Excellence, friendship, respect -- those are the Olympic values, and they were on display in every regard Tuesday, punctuated by a spectacular world record. Put the women's 1500 on the Olympic program.

A tremendous next leap

BARCELONA -- The first-ever high-diving competition at a FINA world championship went down Monday and, yes, said Gary Hunt of Great Britain, one of the 14 divers who took part, there is absolutely an element of crazy involved in throwing yourself off a platform 88 feet high and twisting and spinning your way down for all of like, maybe, three seconds until you hit the water at about 50 miles per hour. "It seems crazy for anyone who hasn't tried it," he said, adding a moment later, "You are taking a risk. But it's a calculated risk."

Maybe this high-diving thing -- which might someday be in the Olympic Games -- is, in fact, crazy smart. Perhaps it's a great lesson in the way a savvy international sports federation moves. Quite possibly it offers a striking comparison: on the one hand, there's FINA's dynamism, and on the other, there's track and field's governing body, which goes by the acronym IAAF and in recent years has often seemed more static, the sport itself relentlessly plagued by doping scandals involving some of its biggest stars.

Track and field's most passionate adherents, including Lamine Diack of Senegal, the IAAF's longtime president, often say that the Summer Olympics begin for real only in the second week, when the action at Olympic Stadium, on the track and in the field, gets underway.

It is unequivocally the case that athletics, as it is known everywhere in the world but the United States, has global reach, and a passionately dedicated -- some might say exquisitely particular -- fan base.

That said, a typical night at the track is too often a carnival, unintelligible to the average spectator, with far too many events going on at the same time.

Meanwhile, aquatic sports -- along with gymnastics -- were this year, in the aftermath of the success of last year's London Games, elevated into the top rank of Olympic sports. Previously, track sat there alone, getting a special share of the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by television rights and other deals from each summer Games.

No more.

As for global reach, consider this line-up of countries from the third heat -- of eight -- in Sunday's men's 50-meter butterfly here at the Palau Sant Jordi: Northern Mariana Islands, Gambia, Tahiti, Guyana, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Mali, Iraq, Pakistan, Tanzania.

The way a championship swim meet works is that the final few heats are the so-called "seeded" heats, with the expected winners. The early heats feature the qualifiers. The butterfly is without question the hardest of the strokes but, as the times in Heat 3 of 8 proved, this was no mere develoment display:

Christopher Clark of Tahiti finished first, in 25.81 seconds. Folarin Ogunsola of Gambia touched last, a more-than-respectable 2.69 seconds behind. Ameer Ali of war-torn Iraq placed sixth, in 27.06.

As these names and numbers show, swimming is doing something right.

What it's also doing right is playing smart politics -- especially in this, an IOC election year.

The IAAF should be surveying the scene and paying attention.

Track has no worries about its place on the Olympic program. But look, for instance, at what wrestling -- which is now fighting to stay in the Games -- is doing. It recently put on an exhibition, deliberately including female wrestlers, at ancient Olympia, in Greece. The message? Sport assuredly must be in touch with its roots, yes. But, and this is the critical part, it has to find new ways to remain ever-relevant.

Surely there are other creative sparks in track like those being shown by Sergei Bubka, the IAAF vice president and IOC presidential candidate, whose 28-page IOC election manifesto is punctuated with creative ideas. Then again, Bubka's mid-winter pole-vault event in Donetsk, Ukraine, is the model for how to take track and field forward -- it's one night, one event and it's a combination of the vaulting itself and whatever music the athletes want to jump to. You don't have to know the basics about pole vaulting to have fun watching it.

Same thing here Monday about high diving. You didn't have to know the intricacies of how you might actually yourself do a front double somersault with one-and-a-half twists to know you were watching the future.  Here were ripped bodies in the hot sun -- these 14 guys from nine nations -- flinging themselves off the platform, then crashing feet-first into the sea, then bubbling up to flash the OK sign. The scores came up to a thumping beat as palm trees swayed in the gentle Mediterranean breeze.

It was postcard-perfect.

"Anything that sticks out of line," away from vertical, "is going to hurt," said Orlando Duque, one of the 14, a Colombian who now spends most of his time in the Hawaiian islands. "If your face is sticking out, it's going to hurt."

Just getting up to the diving platform itself is a test of nerves. It's 120 steps. Learning how to dive from that height, Duque said, took him three full years.

Your lines have to be clean, just like in platform and springboard diving. That's what you get judged on.

Still, he said, the main thing is the rush.  It's like, he said, "when your dog sticks its head out of the window and is enjoying the wind."

Blake Aldridge was Tom Daley's partner in synchro diving at the 2008 Beijing Games; the British pair finished eighth. Now Aldridge is a high-diver. "It's massively different, mentally and visually," he said, adding, "If you get it wrong, there are no second chances."

This is, to be obvious, action sports for the water crowd. Indeed, at high-dive events there are scuba divers bobbing on the surface, just in case.

FINA is run by president Julio Maglione and executive director Cornel Marculescu. Want to know why, under their direction, swimming has moved into the Olympic top-tier?

At the medals ceremony here Sunday night, who appeared on stage to present the medals to the men's and women's 400-meter freestyle medalists? That would be one of the leading IOC presidential contenders, Thomas Bach of Germany, and none other than his ally, the IOC power broker Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait.

On Monday, who presented the medals to the men's 100 breaststroke winners? Singapore's Ser Miang Ng, another top IOC presidential contender.  To the women's 100 butterfly winners? Sir Craig Reedie of Great Britain, an IOC vice president, chairman of the 2020 Summer Games evaluation commission and presumed candidate for the World Anti-Doping Agency presidency.

To the winners of the women's 200-meter individual medley? Marius Vizer, the recently elected president of Sport Accord, the umbrella federation of the international sports federations. Vizer is also president of the International Judo Federation.

This is what's called being smart all around and covering your bases.

This, too:

In recent years, FINA has added open-water events. Here, it announced the addition of mixed relays.

Now, high-diving. "Hopefully, down the line we'll get into the Olympics," said Hunt, who leads the 2013 Red Bull cliff diving series after four events. Hunt has won the last three titles; Duque is the only other man to have won, in 2009.

What has track done to grow the sport? To remain fresh and current? To reach out -- in a concrete way -- to young people?

"The truth is that every year, every day, we are thinking to do something new," Maglione said at a weekend news conference.

Marculescu added a few moments later, "It's no secret today that we are living in a sport business environment. If you don't improve your product every day, or as soon as you can, the value disappears."

One of the jury members in Monday's men's high-diver preliminaries:  the man widely considered the greatest diver of all-time, Greg Louganis, the 1984 and 1988 platform and springboard champion. It's another smart play to get Louganis involved; he is an activist and his voice should be welcomed in the movement.

With Duque atop the leader board, the 14 men now move on to Wednesday's finals; preliminary scores carry over. The women's event, from 20 meters, or 66 feet, is set for Tuesday.

One of the six women who will dive Tuesday, Tara Tira, 27, of San Francisco, said, "It's a tremendous leap," literally and figuratively. She smiled at the inadvertent pun, then said, "It's really cool. It's really exciting for us. It's the next step."

Déjà two all over again

BARCELONA -- With Michael Phelps watching from the stands, the U.S. men took a lead into the final leg of the men's 4x100 relay here Sunday night at the Palau Sant Jordi. As the old building roared, what happened in the next 48 or so seconds was either a bad case of déjà two all over again or a matter of the Americans playing not for short-term glory but for long-term reward. Depends on your point of view.

Just like last year at the Olympic Games in London, the French ran the Americans down in the final 50 meters. Last year it was Yannick Agnel showing Ryan Lochte no mercy. This time, Jeremy Stravius showed Jimmy Feigen how it's done, the French winning in 3:11.18, the Americans 24-hundredths back.

Russia took third, another 20-hundredths behind. Vlad Morozov ripped off a 47.4 third leg but it was not enough.

"We wanted to win. What can I say?" Agnel -- who has been training in Baltimore this year with Phelps' longtime mentor, Bob Bowman -- said afterward.

Bowman, who is the U.S. men's coach here, said, "We could definitely do better. We are disappointed with that."

You think the U.S. men could have used, well, Phelps?

"Those four guys did an amazing job," Natalie Coughlin, the veteran U.S. racer said after the American women's 4x100 relay team won gold, buoyed by Megan Romano's thrilling anchor leg. Coughlin quickly added in a reference to the U.S. team overall but one that served as a punctuation to the men's relay, "Yeah, we miss Michael."

That's because Michael -- who was quite the presence Sunday in Barcelona, signing autographs, posing for photos, doing his thing as swim ambassador, his right foot in a walking boot -- understood fully that the 4x100 free relay traditionally has been an American priority, whether at the worlds and the Olympics, and that winning it is technically fairly simple to diagram if nonetheless difficult to execute.

The men's freestyle relay now has evolved to the point that it takes all four guys swimming in the 47-second range. If one guy rips off 46-something, all kinds of things are possible.

This is what Jason Lezak showed in Beijing in 2008 with his out-of-this-world 46.06 anchor leg, after Phelps himself opened up with a 47.51. Garrett Weber-Gale, swimming second, went 47.02; Cullen Jones, third, 47.65. The Americans won by eight-hundredths of a second over the French.

In 2009, at the world championships in Rome, Phelps led off in 47.78. Lochte went next, in 47.03. Matt Grevers followed in 47.61. Nathan Adrian closed in 46.79. The Americans won.

In 2011, at the worlds in Shanghai, Phelps led off -- in 48.08. Weber-Gale went next, in 48.33. Lezak went third, going 48.15. Adrian swam 47.64. The Americans took third, in 3:11.96. The Aussies put together four 47s, and won in 3:11 flat.

Last year at the Olympics, Adrian kicked things off in  47.89. Phelps went next, in 47.15. Jones, back in form, turned in a 47.6. Then Lochte went 47.74. Should have been good enough, right?

Except that Agnel went 46.74.

The French won in 3:09.93, the Americans taking silver in 3:10.38. Just like this year, the Russians took third.

The American line-up Sunday night was Adrian, Lochte, Anthony Ervin and Feigen.

Feigen swam in the prelims in the 4x100 relay in London, going 48.49. He also has pulled recent national-team duty at the world short-course championships -- that is, in a 25-meter pool -- with comparatively few fans in the stand.

This would be his first turn on the big stage.

In Sunday's prelims, Ervin went 47.38. Ricky Berens, a national-team veteran, rocked a 47.56. Like Feigen, Berens swam in the London prelims. Berens is a two-time gold medalist in the 4x200 relay.

Bowman and the other U.S. coaches opted to go with Feigen and, moreover, to put him in the anchor slot.

The French countered with Agnel, Florent Manaudou, Fabien Gilot and Stravius.

Manaudou won gold in the 50 free in London, in 21.34. Gilot went 47.67 in the London relay win. Stravius was the unknown -- having gone 48.32 in the London relay prelims. At a news conference a couple days ago, he had said he was "happy to be here."

Agnel turned in -- by his measure -- a sub-par 48.76; after his swim the French were seventh. Manaudou went 47.93, lifting them back up to fourth. Then Gilot ripped off a 46.9.

Meanwhile, Adrian went 47.95, Lochte 47.8, Ervin 47.44. It seemed the Americans were heading toward victory.

Stravius, though, went 47.59.

Feigen? 48.23.

Three Americans went 47, one went 48.23 and the U.S. lost by 24-hundredths. There, essentially, is your race.

To his credit, Feigen -- who absolutely is an up-and-comer -- was straight-up about it all afterward. He said Stravius "ended up wanting it more than I did, and that showed." He said, "I've got to learn to swim my own race," acknowledging his breathing pattern was slightly off as he came toward the final wall.

"You know what?" said Ervin, the 2000 Sydney Games 50 free gold medalist who is now 32 and has since seen a lot of life. "You can't win them all. When you can't win, what you get is experience."

"It's kind of a learning experience," Feigen said. "And hopefully, I can get better every time."

Which, Bowman said, is the point. If you're not going to win, there's Rio and 2016 to consider.

Asked if the Americans were missing Phelps Sunday night, he laughed and said, "We were on that relay, I think.

"You know, it's the way it goes. These guys are learning. We are trying to figure out where people should go, really, in 2016. We want to win all these. But, these guys, it's the first time in a new [quadrennium]. Everybody gets kind of a shot to see where they are."

Asked if the French were glad Phelps wasn't swimming, Agnel said, "I don't understand the question." Which he totally did, because he then smiled a very big smile.

Bowman added that Phelps had been texting critiques of the race from his perch in the stands.

"He was disappointed we got beat," Bowman said, adding a moment later, "He was just giving me his analysis of the race, things I could have done better." Which was? Another laugh. "I'll keep that to myself."

Most drug-tested: Ryan Lochte

BARCELONA -- Amid statistics strongly suggesting that American star Ryan Lochte is the most-tested swimmer on Planet Earth, the chairman of the doping control board of swimming's international governing body, FINA, issued a blunt warning here Saturday to all racers on the eve of the swim competition at these 15th world championships: don't take nutritional supplements. Just don't do it, Dr. Andrew Pipe said. Too many supplements are made or marketed in the United States, where the unregulated environment means elite athletes can have no guarantees whatsoever that what's on the label is really what's in the can or bottle, he said.

Pipe said nutrition "gurus" and others suggest that supplements are not only helpful but necessary. For many, he said, "Nutrition isn't a science. It's a religion."

Reality: the anti-doping code makes plain, as track stars such as American Tyson Gay and Jamaican Asafa Powell have learned anew in recent weeks, that athletes bear ultimate responsibility for what's in their systems.

Without making explicit reference to the two sprinters, Pipe said swimming wants to be free of the "scourge of doping that surrounds so many other sports," adding, "We want to demonstrate to the world that we're swimming in clean waters." Racing gets underway Sunday at the Palau Sant Jordi.

The fact is, of course, swimming has in recent years seen its share of notable supplement-related cases.

Two years ago, Brazil's sprint champ Cesar Cielo and three others tested positive for furosemide said to have been included in a supplement. Cielo and two of the others got warnings; the fourth, Vinicius Waked, was suspended because it was a second offense.

Five years ago, American Jessica Hardy lost out at her chance for the 2008 Beijing Games after a positive test for clenbuterol; after proving she had innocently ingested it in a supplement, her suspension was reduced from two years to one, and she would go on to swim at the London 2012 Games.

Pipe's comments come amid the publication of revealing anti-doping statistics from both track and swimming's governing bodies. These facts and figures are readily available on the websites of both federations.

FINA, for instance, conducted 1,859 tests in 2012. Of these, 1,240 -- exactly two-thirds -- were out-of-competition.

Anti-doping authorities love to boast about how many tests they conduct at a major meet. Why? It makes it seem like they are being aggressive.

The truth is, such in-meet tests -- while of course useful as a deterrent -- have to be considered in context. The more sophisticated doper is busy doing his or her thing during training season. That's when the time is optimal to use performance-enhancing drugs to help in recovery or to build mass or strength.

To FINA's credit, it spells out not just who it tested out-of-competition but the actual dates.

That tells you perhaps who is not just high-profile but who might be on FINA's watch list -- for whatever reason. The list does not offer any explanation why a particular athlete might be subject to more tests, or fewer.

So, for instance:

Cielo got tested three times last year: Feb. 14, April 22, Nov. 18.

Hardy, three times, too: Jan. 25, April 12, June 2.

Michael Phelps -- who made a career of saying he absolutely, unequivocally raced clean? Four. Feb. 9, April 14, May 21, June 11.

Missy Franklin -- Four. May 21, June 11, July 12, Dec. 4.

Lochte? Six -- making him FINA's most-tested swimmer in the world. Jan. 18, Feb. 9, March 19, April 17, June 11 and Nov. 28. (He was tested five more times during the short-course championships in Istanbul in December.)

Lochte, it should be noted for the record, has similarly proclaimed that he swims clean and has never offered even a hint of doping-related misconduct. It's unclear why he is the subject of such out-of-competition attention.

France's Yannick Agnel, who swam the stunning last laps in the men's 4x100 relay at the London Games to beat back Lochte and the U.S. team? Four. Feb. 16, March 12, May 10, June 20.

Australian sprint star James Magnussen? Four. Jan. 30, March 7, May 21 and June 25.

Fellow Australian Ian Thorpe, trying to make a comeback? (He announced this weekend it was, finally, over.) Five. Jan. 30, April 11, May 21, July 3, Dec. 19.

Chinese teen Ye Shewin, who won gold in London in the 400 individual medley (in world-record time) and the 200 IM (Olympic-record), her last 400 IM lap drawing comparisons to Lochte? Three tests, two before the Games and intriguingly just once after: Feb. 26, March 10 and Dec. 6.

In all, FINA performed those 1,240 out-of-competition tests on 692 athletes; 64 were in China, and 120 of the 1,240 tests, just under 10 percent; 65 in Japan, and 116, about the same percentage; 68 and 131 in the United States, just over 10 percent; 74 and 146 in Australia, nearing 12 percent.

These figures do not, of course, include testing at the London 2012 Olympic Games, done by the IOC, or any tests carried out by national anti-doping agencies or the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Track and field's governing body, which goes by the acronym IAAF, on July 25 published its own table showing it had conducted more of its tests on Kenyans -- 348, 14.7 percent -- than athletes from any other nation.

As a point of comparison, FINA tested only one Kenyan swimmer, Jason Dunford, on Jan. 23 and again on April 13. A Stanford grad, he finished fifth in Beijing and 12th in London in the 100 butterfly.

Back to track:

Russians were the second-most tested -- 336, 14.2 percent.

Then Americans, 222, or 9.4 percent.

Jamaicans? Fifth on the list, 126, 5.3 percent.

The IAAF does not break down test dates the way FINA does. Instead, in a list updated July 19 it noted only whether an athlete was tested out-of-competition "one to three" times or "four-plus."

Gay? One to three.

Powell? Four-plus. Just like Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, Veronica-Campbell Brown, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Kerron Stewart -- other mainstays of the Jamaican sprint program.

Another Jamaican gold medal-winning sprinter, Sherone Simpson, who, like Powell, has also registered a positive test? One to three.

Campbell-Brown -- who has long been friends with Gay -- recently failed a test, too.

London 800 meter world-record setter David Rudisha of Kenya? Four-plus, just like several other Kenyan standouts, the list of Kenyan names running across four pages.

The list of Russian names spills onto five.

Turkey's Asli Cakir Alptekin, provisionally suspended in May after abnormalities reportedly were detected in her blood profile and now facing a lifetime ban because she served a two-year suspension for a 2004 doping offense? She was tested four-plus in 2012.

The very first name on the IAAF list, meanwhile, is surprise men's London 1500 meter winner Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria. How many tests for him? One to three.

BCN 2013: life after Phelps

BARCELONA -- The world after Michael Phelps gets underway here shortly in sun-splashed Spain, or at least that part that everyone outside serious swim geeks would be inclined to pay attention to, the 2013 swimming world championships, and from all over the globe they sought Friday both to downplay expectations while asserting that quite naturally the point in racing is to win. "It's kind of a down year but everyone is getting ready to race," American Matt Grevers, the London Games 100 meters backstroke gold medalist, said, summing it up perfectly in just one short sentence.

This classic wanting-to-have-it-both-ways is the result of several factors:

It's the year after the Olympic year. Some people are in tip-top shape and others, well, maybe not so much. The thing about swimming is it has no pity. It reveals who has put in the work.

That's what Phelps understood during and after the world championships in Shanghai in 2011, and -- candidly -- what these championships are likely to show, indeed what the build-up to this meet already has made plain. American Allison Schmitt, who won five medals last summer in London, including gold in the 200 freestyle, her signature event, didn't make the 2013 team.

"She hasn't trained very much," her coach, Bob Bowman -- who is of course Phelps' longtime mentor as well and is the U.S. men's coach here -- told reporters at the time. He also tweeted a quote from the Chinese master Lao Tzu, "I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures."

As these Barcelona championships unfold, with the U.S. team's 31 medals from London now just numbers in the history books, with Russian sprinter Vlad Morozov throwing down times like 47.62 in the 100 free just a couple weeks ago at the University Games -- simplicity, patience and compassion might be the watchwords for many.

Then again, the U.S. might rise up as it usually does.

The 2013 U.S. world team is made up of veterans such as Ryan Lochte, Nathan Adrian, Natalie Coughlin and Dana Vollmer, breakout stars such as Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky and a whole bunch of newcomers -- eight national team rookies on the 51-person roster.

Phelps -- he of the 22 Olympic medals, 18 gold -- is of course playing golf. He has said many times that he is doing so contentedly.

That Phelps is not churning down Lane 4 in the final 50 meters does not mean, as France's Fred Bousquet rightly put it Friday, that there aren't any more stars in the worldwide swim constellation. Phelps always said his primary goal was to grow the sport and, as the London Games underscored, his brilliance  has brought forth swimmers from all over the world -- South Africa's Chad le Clos, Lithuania's Ruta Meilutyte and others.

"We should not be different now," Bousquet said. "Just chasing the dream like every other swimmer."

Even so, the world championships in the year following an Olympics is always something of an odd affair. Everyone is acutely aware that the dream -- the real dream -- is three long years away.

"We want to peak in 2016, not 2013," Michael Scott, the Australian team's director of high performance, said at that team's news conference following the Americans -- the Aussies trying to effect a wholesale change in what an independent review called a "toxic" team culture following just 10 medals won in London, only one gold.

The new Aussie way, Scott said, is "by being professional in and out of the pool and doing that with team unity and enjoyment," the theory being medals will follow.

Ryan Lochte, meanwhile, sounded a lot like Michael Phelps circa 2011 -- Lochte also emphasizing that his main goal was Rio in 2016, not Barcelona 2013. "I knew I had to get back in the water eventually," Lochte said, meaning that if he was going to swim here he had to resume training after his reality-TV show and other out-of-the-pool adventures.

"Joan Rivers -- she's awesome. She's a character. Being on her show, it was a lot of fun. Before the show, they told me to wear a swimsuit and I was, like, all right. I put it on under my actual business suit. During the show, she told me to take it off and -- I did. I mean, what can I say? It was a lot of fun.

"You never know what to expect with her. One time I was sitting on a chair talking to her, next thing I knew I was in a fountain still talking to her. It was a lot of fun."

To be fair to Lochte, he didn't just volunteer this story. He was asked about hanging out with Joan Rivers. Then again, before this year, Lochte acknowledged, he had been a beast in training. This year, though, he said, "I took a long break. I don't know if it's going to help me," adding, "My body needed to re-charge. Now I am back in the water and I am excited to race."

Phelps said almost the same thing at the world championships in Shanghai in 2011 before Lochte drilled him in the 200 individual medley, setting a world record, 1:54 flat, Phelps finishing 16-hundredths of a second back.

That loss spurred Phelps to get back in the pool for hard training. In London, Phelps won the 200 IM, in 1:54.27; Lochte took silver, in 1:54.9.

"I mean, Phelps -- there is no doubt about it, he is going to go down in history as the best swimmer ever," Lochte said. "I was just happy I was part of it. He is the hardest racer I ever had to go up against."

Bowman, asked for probably the jillionth time whether Phelps is coming back, offered his practiced reply: "Well, my answer to that is always -- when I see it, I will believe it, and I have had no indication to this point … that's where I will leave that one."

Which is where this meet gets going. Racing starts Sunday, with the first big event the men's 4x100 freestyle relay.

Michael Scott, the Aussie team leader, was asked the key to the relay. In the way that Grevers succinctly summed up the meet, so did Scott: "Swim fast."

In a perfect world: Mellouli rocks

Everyone knows Michael Phelps. Pretty much only swim geeks, and Tunisians, know the story of Ous Mellouli, which is the way it is but not the way it should be. In a perfect world, Mellouli would be celebrated like Phelps. He is charming, funny, good-looking, well-spoken, plain-speaking, at ease in different languages and, as a University of Southern California guy, completely and totally comfortable in celebrity culture.

All of that, and Mellouli, now 29, is one of the most accomplished athletes of our or any time, with a knack for coming up big when the lights are brightest. In winning the open-water five-kilometer swim Sunday at the 2013 world championships in Barcelona, Spain, Mellouli added to his considerable resume with a victory that nobody saw coming.

Maybe -- truth be told -- not even him.

With a final kick evocative of the way that runners in the 5k distance race finish off the race on the track, Mellouli won in 53 minutes, 30.4 seconds, holding off Canada's Eric Hedlin, who finished 1.2 seconds back. Germany's Thomas Lurz, another six-tenths behind, took third.

"You get in that zone and your thoughts get dialed in," Mellouli said Sunday in a phone call. "In that moment, all the other things don't matter. It doesn't matter if you are swimming in mud. You just have to get to the finish first."

The victory closed a circle of sorts.

It was 10 years ago, at the 2003 Barcelona world championships, that Phelps won the 400-meter individual medley. Laszlo Cseh of Hungary took silver in that race. Mellouli took third.

Barcelona 2003 was, in many ways, the meet that announced Phelps to the world. Since then, of course, Phelps has gone on to win 22 Olympic medals, 18 of them gold.

Mellouli?

From Tunisia, he went to school in France, then came to USC. There he would connect with coach Dave Salo, who has a remarkable record of helping swimmers -- among them Mellouli, U.S. breaststroker Rebecca Soni and the likely breakout star of the 2013 meet, Russia's Vlad Morozov -- achieve their best.

At the 2004 Games, Mellouli finished fifth in the 400 IM, then turned to longer distances -- which, it would turn out, would prove his calling.

In 2007, at the world championships in Melbourne, Australia, Mellouli came from behind to win the 800; he also earned a silver in the 400. Then, though, his results would be nullified after a positive test for amphetamines. It turned out -- and he has always totally owned up to this -- that he had taken an Adderall pill to finish writing a term paper at USC.

A dumb mistake that any college kid could have made.

Because Mellouli was forthright, authorities reduced his suspension from the usual term, two years, to 18 months.

In retrospect, Mellouli says now, the episode served as a powerful lesson: "I gained perspective and built momentum from it. It was a mistake and cost me my first world title. I came out of it a stronger and better and more professional athlete. I'm actually grateful for it."

At the 2008 Beijing Games, in the 1500 -- the swimming equivalent of a mile -- much of the focus was whether Australia's Grant Hackett, the two-time defending Olympic champ, would become the first man to win the same individual event at three consecutive Games.

Mellouli won the race, in 14:40.84. Hackett took silver, in 14:41.53.

It was Tunisia's first-ever swimming medal.

At the 2012 Games, Mellouli, showing his versatility and range, swam both in the open-water event and in the pool.

The 10k open-water marathon wound through London's Serpentine, in Hyde Park. Mellouli won, in 1:49.55.1; Lurz took silver, 3.4 seconds behind.

In the pool, meanwhile, in the 1500, China's Sun Yang turned in an other-worldly 14:31.02 to win gold. Canada's Ryan Cochrane, who had won bronze in 2008, finished in 14:39.63 to claim silver; Mellouli finished third, in 14:40.31.

That made him the first to win pool and open-water medals at a single Games.

After London, Mellouli took some well-deserved time off. He traveled -- Rio de Janeiro, the Bahamas, Montreal, Hawaii, back to Tunisia, Europe. By his own admission, he gained -- well, 30 pounds.

Thinking he was going to retire, he didn't swim meaningfully for six months.

What makes Sunday's victory all the more astonishing is that he has been training -- really training -- for only eight weeks.

That's right. Eight weeks.

He did a stint at altitude in Colorado with Phelps' coach, Bob Bowman; some time with his Tunisian coaches; some work with Salo; with Catherine Vogt, who also helps train Sunday's 5k women's winner, Haley Anderson; and with Jon Urbanchek, the former University of Michigan head coach, now based in Southern California.

It was, Mellouli said, "something completely different, no structure at all, going by feel," and "everybody really helped out."

He said he intends to race the 10k on Monday. And now Rio and 2016 beckon.

"The coolest thing about it is I really love open water," Mellouli said, adding, "It's a great challenge. That's why you see my reactions at the end -- it's a scream of a mixture of just rage and just happiness and everything.

"It tests you. You get tested mentally and physically and everything. To be part of it, helping the sport grow and giving the sport credibility and now making a name for myself in the open-water world, I see the sport growing year by year -- I take a lot of pride in that, for sure."

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Update:

Mellouli finished third in Monday's 10k.

Greece's Spyridon Gianniotis, the Shanghai 2011 world champion in the 10k, repeated in Barcelona, winning in 1 hour, 49 minutes and 11.8 seconds. He had finished fourth at last summer's London Games.

Lurz took second, in 1:49:14.5. Mellouli's third-place time: 1:49.19.2.