'The Last Gold': on history, and shades of gray

The very essence of competition at the Olympics is fair play. What happens when doping makes a mockery of that ideal? When it’s all but impossible to re-write history? When the notion of who is a victim, and why, is the farthest thing from black and white — but is, instead, layered in varying shades of gray?

These and other questions are as essential now, amid allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russia, as they have been since at least 1976, at the Montreal Olympics, when East German’s female swimmers won 11 of 13 gold medals.

The world did not understand then the state-sponsored doping conspiracy it was witnessing in plain sight.

Now it does.

But, like all matters of history with pressing relevance for our time, the question is not just what happened.

It’s how to make sense of it.

And thus to go forward — in this context, in the best spirit of the Olympics, to make the world maybe just a little bit better for having shared the experience.

As we have discovered since after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the East German women were bulked-up on a powerful anabolic steroid, a little blue pill called oral turinabol.

The 1976 U.S. men’s team won 12 of 13 events. The East German women won 11 of 13. The U.S. women, like the men long a power in international swimming, won but one gold medal — the final race on the program, the 4x100 freestyle relay. (The other non-East German gold: the Soviet swimmer Marina Koshevaya, in the 200-meter breaststroke.)

That 4x1 relay — and more broadly, the swimming at those Olympics — tells the story of “The Last Gold,” a documentary that made its premier Monday night at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

The four women on the U.S. relay: Kim Peyton, Wendy Boglioli, Jill Sterkel and Shirley Babashoff. The winning time: a then-world record 3:44.82. The East Germans took second, in 3:45.5. Canada won the bronze, in 3:48.81.

Peyton died in 1986, just 29, of a brain tumor. For the other three, the showing of the film marked the first time they had been together in these 40 years.

Babashoff, arguably the central protagonist of the piece, brought her gold medal for the occasion. Sterkel, who was just 15 in 1976, said that watching the movie helped her recall so much about what happened way back when, noting that what she really remembered was Babashoff getting them free Puma shoes: “That was awesome.”

Babashoff, in her remarks to the audience at the conclusion of the film, posed the central question: why do this film, 40 years later?

She answered: “Because it’s still relevant.”

Indeed, It’s all the more important now to understand what happened then. Everyone with even a passing interest in the Olympics ought to see “The Last Gold.”

Boglioli asserted that Olympic athletes in particular have a “moral obligation,” explaining, “This is what sport is about. These are the rules.”

She also said, “I think something is amiss in sports today.”

Sterkel, who would go on to coach the women’s swim and dive teams at the University of Texas for 15 years, said, “I think I can safely say that after ’76 we haven’t experienced a clean Olympics, which is mortifying.”

She added, “For me, the tragedy is when I do watch sport … having [that] doubt in the back of mind: is this person legit?”

Having to entertain that notion, she said, is “awful.”

Truth is, doping has been going on since time immemorial. The Montreal 1976 Games were hardly the first Olympics, nor will they be the last, at which someone from somewhere tried to cheat to win.

What makes 1976 so breathtaking, of course, is the scale and the scope of the East German doping program.

This is why USA Swimming made the documentary, spending in the range of seven figures to do so. Brian T. Brown, who won 15 Emmy awards for his work at NBC, directed the project. Chuck Wielgus and Mike Unger, No. 1 and 2 for years at USA Swimming, served as executive producers. The acclaimed American actor Julianna Margulies narrates.

Going forward, the production is hugely likely to serve as a model for other sport federations, whether in or out of the United States. Why is elemental: content is now king. And every single sports federation generates massive amounts of content; that is, every single federation has a story, or stories, to tell. Why rely on outsiders when you can make a journalistically responsible and dramatically compelling vehicle yourself?

Especially one that can run on The Olympic Channel, likely to launch after the Rio 2016 Games.

The film also underscores an elemental lesson in journalism, indeed story-telling, everywhere:

Have the courage to follow your own convictions. Don’t be swayed by the mooing of other reporters in the herd — like the U.S. press corps in attendance in Montreal, which to a large degree soured on the U.S. women swimmers, seeing them as bad sports for not losing with grace, even casting Babashoff as something of a villain with the nickname “Surly Shirley.”

When she had the temerity to, you know, tell the truth.

Boglioli said, “At some point, you do wonder: how are they so fast? Why doesn’t everyone see the obvious?”

In a brief address to the crowd in Culver City, California, before the film showed, Unger said there were three reasons to make it:

To tell history.

To tell the “anti-doping message": “how to do it right,” meaning the way the U.S. team approached the 1976 Games in contrast to the East Germans. The U.S. women, to be clear, were hugely unlikely to be doping, then or now. Doping just wasn’t — and to a large degree, still isn’t — a culture with significant traction within U.S. swimming. Katie Ledecky this summer at the Rio 2016 Games, like Janet Evans in 1988 and 1992, like Babashoff in 1976: outsized talents with ferocious will and absurd work ethic.

The third reason: to pay tribute to the women on that 1976 U.S. team.

The risk with such motivation, of course, is that the film could have veered into jingoism.

It is the farthest thing from.

A key question it poses: who is a victim?

The American women, Babashoff in particular, who if the East Germans weren’t doping assuredly would have won bunches of golds?

Or the East German athletes themselves? They essentially had no choice. They had to take those blue pills.

Over the years, some leading swim writers have called for Olympic and international swim federation officials to consider yanking the 1976 medals away from the East Germans.

It’s one thing, as the International Olympic Committee does now, to re-allocate medals when someone like the U.S. track star Marion Jones admits to doping. She “won” five medals, three gold, at the Sydney 2000 Games. The world saw it live on television. But all she has now are dubious memories, not medals. She chose to cheat.

It is the case now, via the World Anti-Doping Code, that an athlete who dopes is liable for whatever is in his or her system. That is the cardinal rule. But the rewriting of history on a significant scale surely has to involve more: intent — the volitionally undertaken choice to cheat — has to serve as a significant element in assessing how and whether to re-work facts as they are, and were.

As the film suggests, and pointedly: how would stripping the East German female swimmers right a wrong that was committed not just by them but to them as well?

By extension: if the allegations accusing Russia of state-sponsored or -sanctioned sport turn out to be proven true, what to make of those athletes in a system where choice might well be, at best, limited?

In Montreal, East Germany’s Ulrike Tauber won gold in the women’s 400-meter individual medley, breaking the world record by just a touch over six seconds, a crazy drop in time; she also took silver in the 200 butterfly. In the film, she says of the use of “substances,” as she refers to the program of oral turinabol, “Surely, that affects the Olympic victory.”

She says, “I admit that honestly.”

At the same time, she says, “… who can guarantee me that it wasn’t also the case in other countries? Who can guarantee me that it was only [East Germany]?”

Answer: no one.

What is clear, another point the movie underscores, is this:

If you give anabolic steroids to male subjects, it may enhance performance to some degree. But consider: the East German men, who also were doping, didn’t run away with the 1976 meet.

If you give anabolic steroids to women, it almost surely will enhance performance, and probably to a huge degree, because androgenic steroids — by definition — are rooted in testosterone, the male hormone. Women ripped by testosterone are way more likely to defeat women who are not.

This is the basic from 1976 that leads to a considered exploration of anything and everything else.

This lesson holds consequences now well beyond Russia and allegations of a state link to a widespread doping problem. And way beyond swimming, too.

Consider the case of South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya. To be clear, no one is suggesting that she is doping, or has been using illicit performance-enhancing substances. She simply has naturally high testosterone levels. The rules, as they are now, say she can compete as a woman. She is already running 800 meters this season in about 1:56. No one else is even really close.

Is that fair? What to do about her, or others similarly situated? What about the other women in the field who don’t have her indisputable testosterone advantage?

In 2009, when Semenya first burst onto the international scene, at the world championships in Berlin, she was depicted far too often as a — well, a freak. Reporters camped out around a trailer that served as a TV-style green room, and shouted questions as she emerged to collect her medal. She looked, understandably, frozen with fear.

In Rio, Semenya’s story is likely to emerge as a core narrative of the Games, in real time and, like the East German women, for generations to come.

The obvious will, again, be front and center.

If past is prologue, how will we tell — and how will we remember — the story?

U.S. Kazan 2015 mantra: 'are defeats necessary?'

KAZAN, Russia — David Plummer is a championship backstroker. Here, he served as a captain of the U.S. team. Two years ago, at the world championships in Barcelona, Plummer earned silver in the 100 back. Here, though, he managed only a ninth-place finish, not even good enough to make the finals, ultimately won by Australia’s Mitchell Larkin. As the 2015 world championships drew Sunday to a close, Plummer turned to Twitter, and some philosophy from the Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho:

“I ask myself: are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen…

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

“Only when we overcome [our trials] do we understand why they were there.”

The quest for understanding begins now.

These 2015 Kazan world championships marked arguably the American team’s poorest performance in the history of the world championships, dating to 1973.

When all was said and done, the U.S. ended up with 23 medals, eight gold.

The American team’s weakest world championships performance, before this one: 1994, in Rome, with 21 medals, four gold.

Take out the two medals in the mixed relays, both new events (gold in the 4x100 free Saturday, silver in the 4x1 medley Wednesday) and the total drops to 21.

Those figures stand in stark contrast to the 2013 total: 29 overall, 13 gold.

Compare, too, to recent years: 29 and 16 at Shanghai 2011, 22 and 10 in 2009 (Rome again), at the height of the plastic-suit craziness.

The only Americans to win individual gold: Katie Ledecky (four), Ryan Lochte (one). That’s it. The other winners: that mixed relay, the women's 4x200 free relay (anchored by Ledecky), the men's medley.

The question heading toward a different set of Trials, next summer in Omaha, a few weeks before the Aug. 5 start of the Rio Games, is whether what happened here amounts to aberration or the confluence of potent trends that mean the United States’ long-established role at the top of the swimming world is at significant risk.

— It’s indisputable that, owing to the worldwide import of Michael Phelps, world-class swimming has gotten better and, more so, better in more places. Argentina won its first-ever medal here. So, too, Singapore. Akram Ahmed of Egypt took fourth in the men’s 1500 Sunday night. A record 189 nations competed in Kazan, up from 177 at Barcelona 2013.

— The Australians are back, and in a big way. The Aussies won one gold in swimming at the London 2012 Games, three in Barcelona. Here, seven gold, 16 overall.

— The Brits emerged as a force, in particular 200 free champ James May and breaststroke god Adam Peaty. Their final tally: five gold, nine overall.

— The Chinese have both talent and depth, with 13 medals overall, five gold, including Ning Zetao's victory in the 100; he is the first Asian to win swimming's male heavyweight fight.

Ning’s victory made things a little crazy on the internet in China. The Wall Street Journal reported that a CCTV host wrote on his verified account that Ning “is the husband in everyone’s dream.”

Never mind that Ning is just 22.

The same host, referring to the social media-app WeChat, “All women went crazy overnight, and pictures of all angles of his abdominal muscles swept my WeChat moments.”

By mid-day Friday, more than 100,000 web users had posted selfies with the hashtag “Ning Zetao’s Girlfriend.”

“We call handsome boys little fresh meat,” a Weibo user wrote. “But for special ones like Ning, he should be called little fresh fish.”

As for the Americans, and first the bright spots:

— Ledecky raced into the history books, winning five gold medals, the 200, 400, 800 and 1500, and that 4x200 free relay.

In all, Kazan 2015 featured 12 world records. Ledecky set three of them.

For the next year, she will be the face of the American team, which is lovely, because she not only wins, she wins with great class.

On Saturday, after her final race, the 800 free, which she won in world-record time, Ledecky met with the press, then as she was walking away from a media clutch, she met up with a gaggle of red-shirted volunteers who squealed in happiness that she would take a picture with them.

Unaware that three reporters were lingering behind, Ledecky said to the volunteers, “Thanks for all the great work you do.”

Ledecky and Kerri Walsh Jennings, the beach volleyball star, are in this way always gracious and polite to seemingly everyone they meet. Maybe it’s something about Stanford, which is where Walsh Jennings went and Ledecky is due to attend.

— Phelps, assuming he sticks to his vow to keep doing the hard work that swimming absolutely demands, figures to race for gold in at least three events next summer, the 100 and 200 flys and the 200 individual medley.

Swimming this week in San Antonio, at the U.S. nationals, Phelps won the 100 fly in 50.45, the 200 in 1:52.94. Both times would have won here.

More pointedly, both victories came amid some smack-talk from the likes of Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh, winner in Kazan of the 200 fly, and South Africa’s Chad le Clos, winner here of the 100 fly.

Le Clos won Saturday in 50.56, then declared Phelps hadn’t gone that fast in years.

Oops — just hours later in San Antonio, here came that 50.45, Phelps' fastest-time ever in the event in a textile suit.

Le Clos also said here, referring to Phelps, “I’m just very happy that he’s back to his good form so he can’t come out and say, ‘Oh, I haven’t been training,’ or all that rubbish that he’s been talking. Next year is going to be Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier.”

Cseh won Wednesday in 1:53.48. Of Phelps’ 1:52.94 in San Antonio, the fastest time by any swimmer since Phelps himself in 2009, Cseh said, “It’s quite good but it doesn’t matter because I won the world championship.”

Gentlemen, we are not here to tell you what to say, or not, but history has shown repeatedly that if Phelps puts in his training blocks, you mess with fire when you blow this kind of smoke.

Ask the likes of Ian Thorpe, Ian Crocker and, famously, Milorad Cavic.

When Phelps has someone he can — in his mind — target, it has not gone well, swim-wise, for said target.

“The comments were interesting,” Phelps said Saturday in San Antonio. “It just fuels me. If you want to do it, go for it. I welcome it.”

— Lochte's victory in the 200 IM made for his fourth world championship gold in a row in the event.

At the same time, he finished fourth in the 200 free, same as in 2013 and 2012.

Lochte is for sure Mr. Reliable on the relays, where the American performance here — without Lochte or Nathan Adrian, the U.S. men failed to qualify for the 4x1 finals — showed just how valuable he is.

Here is the challenge for Lochte in the 200 IM come the U.S. Trials in Omaha and, presumably, Rio:

Phelps.

At an Olympics, the 200 IM traditionally comes on the same night as the 200 back, and thus it will be in Rio, on Thursday, Aug. 11. At previous Games, Lochte has opted to try to pull off that grueling double. In London, he took third in the 200 back, then silver — behind Phelps — in the 200 IM.

-- Connor Jaeger broke the 11-year-old American record in the 1500 on Sunday night, going 14:41.2. Larsen Jensen had gone 14:45.29 at the 2004 Athens Games.

Now for some question marks:

— This U.S. 2015 team was picked a year ago. Was that a good plan? No Caitlin Leverenz, Allison Schmitt, Jack Conger or others who might have made a difference.

— The U.S. sprinting program, excluding Adrian, needs someone to step up, and big time. No one did here.

— Tyler Clary had won a medal of some sort at the 2009, 2011 and 2013 worlds; he is the 2012 London 200 back gold medalist. Here? No medals.

-- Jaeger: That 14:41.2 earned him silver, 1.53 seconds behind Gregorio Paltrinieri of Italy, in 14:39.67. China's Sun Yang, the world record-holder and pre-race favorite, did not swim, saying he felt a heart problem -- literally his heart, not his desire to race -- before the call to the blocks. Jaeger's other Kazan races: fourth, 400 free; fourth, 800 free.

— The relays: That the U.S. men missed out on the finals of the 4x1 free is, in a word, inexcusable. The men’s 4x2 free relay finished second, the first time since 2004 the Americans had not won at a worlds or Olympics (the British took first, with Guy making up a 1.63-second deficit and then some, touching 42-hundredths ahead of Michael Weiss).

In 2001, the U.S. men won no relays. That had been the only time ever at worlds history there had been no U.S. men’s relay gold.

Thus the stakes were high for Sunday night’s medley, the Americans opting to lead off not with Matt Grevers — gold medalist in the 100 back at London 2012 and Barcelona 2013, silver medalist in the event at Beijing 2008 — but with Ryan Murphy, who threw out a 52.18 in the mixed medley relay heats.

The thinking? Larkin won the 100 back in 52.40. Murphy’s 52.18 made for the fourth-fastest time ever in the event.

Larkin kept the Americans close, third, with a 53.05; Larkin turned the race over with the Aussies in first, in 52.41. On the third leg, butterfly, Tom Shields put the Americans in first; Adrian held on to bring the Americans home to gold in 3:29.93.

Adrian's free split: 47.41.

The split for Australia's Cameron McEvoy, who was closing: 46.6.

— Dana Vollmer is back in training. She won the women’s 100 fly in London. Can she, now a new mom, make it all the way back to the top of the world stage?

— Missy Franklin? Ohmigod, she did not win every single thing she entered. What?!

Franklin did, for instance, come through, and in a big way, in that mixed 4x1 free relay, anchoring the team to victory and a world record.

As Franklin heads back home to Colorado, however, it’s clear that Ledecky is now the 200 free boss, so there’s that.

For another, Franklin was clearly not her best self here. She faded significantly on the last lap of Saturday’s 200 backstroke, a race she has owned for years. Summoned to swim the backstroke leg of the women's medley Sunday night, she managed 59.81, fifth; the Americans would end up fourth.

Franklin’s longtime coach, Todd Schmitz, told the Denver Post a few weeks ago that he has had to “rekindle” in her “the same kind of fire that I used to see.”

Franklin said Saturday she was “proud” of what she had done here, given the work she had put in over the past two months; she said she looked forward to seeing the results of a full year of going at it hard.

Plummer, meanwhile, has been chasing Rio since missing out on London 2012 by 12-hundredths of a second.

His ninth-place Monday in the 100 came while he was, literally, sick. “Have been battling a stomach bug, but I can't make any excuses,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “I have to find a way to be faster.”

On Sunday, in the 50 back, a non-Olympic event, Plummer finished eighth, of eight, in 24.95. Camille Lacourt of France won, in 24.23; Grevers took second, in 24.61.

Maybe, then, time for another quote that Plummer once cited, this one on his Facebook page, from “The Boys in the Boat,” the story of the University of Washington rowing crew that won gold at the 1936 Berlin Games:

"The trick would be to find which few of them had the potential for raw power, the nearly superhuman stamina, the indomitable willpower, and the intellectual capacity necessary to master the details of technique."

The deadline in this instance is already marked on swim calendars: the first day of the U.S. Trials in Omaha. It's Sunday, June 26, 2016.

Ledecky's epic: 5 finals, 5 golds, 3 world records

KAZAN, Russia — In keeping with the Led Zeppelin selection that blared out from the PA system before the start of the finals here at Kazan Arena, the next-to-last night of the 2015 world championships, Saturday’s racing made for another edition for the U.S. swim team of Good Times Bad Times. Heading toward Rio 2016, the question: is this Dazed and Confused U.S. team ready for prime time?

Katie Ledecky cemented her status as the world’s most dominant swimmer, setting her third world record of the meet in winning the 800 freestyle in a world-record 8:07.39 — a whopping 3.61 seconds under her own prior mark. Earlier this week, she won the 200, 400 and 1500 and, as well, anchored the 4x200 free relay to victory. For her, clearly, The Song Remains the Same.

In two world championship appearances, Kazan 2015, and Barcelona 2013, Ledecky has only gold medals. Nine finals, nine golds. Plus one Olympic final as well, at the London 2012 Games: gold in the 800.

The 800 world record she set Saturday? Ledecky’s 10th since 2013.

For far too many others on the U.S. team, would the appropriate Zeppelin selection maybe be I’m Gonna Crawl? Or, in reference to the rest of the world, You Shook Me?

It used to be, of course, that the U.S. team gave No Quarter.

American racers would Bring it On Home, remorselessly, on the way toward winning a haul of medals.

With just one more day to go at these championships, the U.S. team stood atop the medals count, with 18, seven gold.

That, though, is a considerable distance from the 29 medals, 16 gold, the U.S. took home from Barcelona 2013.

The only Americans with individual golds: Ledecky and Ryan Lochte, winner of the men’s 200 individual medley.

Other points of note from the medals table after Saturday:

The Australians have six gold medals, 12 overall. Six equals the Aussie gold total from: the Shanghai 2011 worlds plus the London 2012 Games plus the Barcelona 2013 worlds.

China has 12 overall medals, too, four gold.

The British team, the surprise of the meet, has nine overall medals, five gold.

While there are reasonable questions about whether the U.S. selection process for this meet is still the way to go — the team was picked a year ago — the indisputable takeaway from this meet will be that the rest of the world is more than capable of winning races the United States had, for years, straight-out owned.

Australian Mitchell Larkin’s victory in the men’s 200 backstroke marked the first time an American had not won the event at a worlds or Olympics since 1994.

Larkin became the first swimmer since world record-holder Aaron Piersol to win the 100 and 200 backstrokes at a long-course worlds.

Ryan Murphy finished fifth, Tyler Clary — the 2012 London Games gold medalist in the event — seventh.

At the Barcelona 2013 worlds and again the year before, at the London 2012 Games, the Americans swept the Olympic-event backstrokes (the 100 and 200 — the 50 is not an Olympic event). Here: Australia swept the Olympic-event backstrokes.

In the men’s 4x200 free relay, the United States had won gold at every world championships and Olympics since 2004. Here? Silver, in 7:04.75, 42-hundredths behind the British, anchored by new sprint sensation James Guy, winner here of the 200 freestyle itself.

Last Sunday, the U.S. men’s 4x100 relay team failed to qualify for the finals.

It was a measure of how seriously the Americans took the final event on Saturday's program, the 4x100 mixed free relay, that they threw out four of the biggest names on the team: Lochte, Nathan Adrian, Simone Manuel, Missy Franklin.

They won, in a world-record 3:23.05.

In San Antonio, meanwhile, at the U.S. championships, which are going on simultaneously, Michael Phelps — swimming there instead of here because of the fallout from his drunk-driving case — turned in the fastest 200 fly time of the year on Friday, 1:52.94.

That also marked Phelps’ fastest time in the event since 2009.

It would have won here by 54-hundredths of a second.

“It’s good to do it on my own shore in the country that I represent,” Phelps said afterward. “I think it just shows you that anything is possible if you do want something bad enough. I went through a lot, and to be able to train like I did to get ready for this and do that, I can do anything I put my mind to.”

Then again, there was this from Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh, who won the 200 fly here, in 1:53.48: “I saw his time,” meaning the San Antonio swim. “It’s quite good but it doesn’t matter because I won the world championship.”

And le Clos, after winning the 100 fly on Saturday night, traditionally Phelps’ province, in 50.56: “I just did a time that [Phelps] hasn’t done in four years, so he can keep quiet now.”

The sole American in the finals, Tom Shields, finished fourth, in 51.06.

Cseh took second, in 50.87. Joseph Schooling, in 50.96, grabbed third, the first-ever swim worlds medal for Singapore, and just one day before its 50th National Day.

Phelps won the 100 fly in London. He did not swim two years ago in Barcelona. Le Clos is now the back-to-back worlds winner of the race.

Adrian had looked awesome in qualifying for the men’s 50 free, setting an American record by going 21.37 in the semifinals. That was, briefly, the year’s top time.

In Saturday’s finals, Adrian took second, in 21.52, 33-hundredths behind France’s Florent Manaudou, who put down a 21.19.

In the women’s 200 backstroke, which went down before the 4x1 mixed relay, Franklin turned first at 100 and 150 but finished second, behind Australia’s Emily Seebohm. The winning time: 2:05.81. Franklin: 2:06.34.

Franklin had won the 200 back at Barcelona 2013 and Shanghai 2011 and, as well, at London 2012. She is also the world record-holder in the event, 2:04.06, set in March, 2012.

Seebohm’s final 50 meters: 31.4.

Franklin: 32.98.

Same point, another set of stats:

At 150, Franklin was up on Seebohm by 1.31 seconds. Seebohm ended up winning the race by 53-hundredths of a second. That is — a lot to think about.

Franklin said later Saturday that she was “honestly really proud” of her performance here, explaining, “I have come a long way in a couple months. That gives me a lot of confidence that if I can come this far in two months, then I’m really excited to see what I can do with a year.”

As for Ledecky:

— A gold medal Sunday in the 400 free.

— A world record in Monday’s 1500 prelims. Another world record in Tuesday’s finals, followed 29 minutes later by racing for a place in the 200 free finals.

— A gold medal Wednesday over an incredible field in the 200.

— The anchor leg Thursday in the winning 4x2 relay.

And then, Saturday, world record in the 800.

“I just couldn’t be happier with how that swim went, how this whole week went,” she said late Saturday.

She also said, “I kind of thought it would be 8:08, so to see the 8:07 was, like, great.

“You know, it’s August 8th. I was swimming the 800. And, believe it or not, it would have been my grandpa’s 88th birthday. And so we were joking yesterday, my family, you know we don’t really talk about times or anything but they were just kind of telling me all these things. They were, like, 8:08, you know!

“I didn’t have any pressure. I didn’t really feel like I needed to do that. But I thought that would be really cool. 8:08. That’s why I was really happy with 8:07.”

Just, you know, a Whole Lotta Love.

Lochte makes like it's 2009, or 2011, or 2013

KAZAN, Russia — Throughout his swims here this week, a couple fans in the stands at Kazan Arena have held up a sign that proclaims, “Ryan Lochte is the best swimmer in the world.” Well.

Katie Ledecky? Who anchored the U.S. women's 4x200 relay team to gold Thursday, her fourth gold (amid two world records), with the 800 freestyle -- a lock -- still coming up?

Lochte, meanwhile, cruised to victory Thursday night in the 200-meter individual medley, a race that hearkened back to the good ol’ days when the Americans would line ‘em up and the rest of the world would submit.

Lochte had been dominant in the rounds of the 200 IM and the final proved no different. He won in 1:55.81, 84-hundredths of a second ahead of Brazil’s Thiago Pereira. China’s Wang Shun took third, a flat one second back.

After Thursday, five days into this eight-day meet, the U.S. swim team held 11 medals.

After Day 5 of the 2013 worlds, the Americans had 18 medals.

This much is so clear: the U.S. is on pace for one of its most perplexing worlds, ever.

With a year to go before the start of the Rio Olympics — the one-year out anniversary came Wednesday — the issue now squarely confronting USA Swimming is whether this meet will do what needs to be done: serve as a major wake-up call.

"Missy Franklin. Ryan Lochte. Katie Ledecky. This is all?" a key figure in international swimming said Thursday night.

Franklin, who swam lead-off on the 4x2 relay, won her 10th career world championship gold medal, most ever. (Libby Trickett of Australia has nine.) Ledecky now has eight world golds.

The rest of the world has more than caught up to the Americans. The medal standings after Thursday:

The U.S., with those 11, on top. China, 10. Australia and Great Britain, seven apiece.

Just a few examples for further emphasis:

Ning Zetao became China’s first male sprint world champion, winning the 100 free Thursday night in 47.84, best in the world in 2015. American Nathan Adrian, the 2012 London Games gold medalist, finished in a tie for seventh, at 48.31.

Ning, speaking through a translator, said at a post-race news conference that it is "a dream of Asia, a dream of China" to win sprint golds.

Asked if he thought his life would change because of Thursday's victory, he said no. He had saluted as the Chinese national anthem played during his victory ceremony and said, "I'm just a soldier."

Federico Grabich of Argentina took bronze in the 100 free. That made for Argentina’s first-ever swimming world championships medal. (In the pool, not open water.)

The silver that the Italian women won in the 4x200 relay? Italy's first-ever world championships medal in a relay event.

This is all of course directly attributable to Michael Phelps, even though he is not here in Kazan, part of the fallout from his drunk-driving case.

When Phelps was a teenager, he famously said his primary aim was to grow the sport of swimming. At these Kazan worlds, there are a record 189 countries taking part.

More, the rest of the world saw what Phelps famously did in Beijing in 2008, when he went 8-for-8. In thousands of towns all over the world, young swimmers — or would-be swimmers — said some variation of, that looks cool.

South Africa’s Chad le Clos used to watch Phelps on YouTube — then took him down in the 200 fly finals at the London 2012 Games.

Think about this: a swimmer who was 11 in 2008, when Phelps dominated Beijing, is now 18.

Among the issues now on the table for USA Swimming, or at least ought to be:

— Should there be a change in the way the U.S. picks its world championship team? This one was named a year ago. That didn’t allow for the emergence of swimmers who found themselves either at the Pan American Games in Toronto or the World University Games in South Korea.

— Because the athletes knew a year ago that they were on the team, did that lead to some measure of slacking off? Where, over the past year, was the accountability?

All Olympic sports are by definition demanding but swimming all the more so. The sport reveals, especially in the final 50 meters, whether you have put in the work.

— How do the racers deal with what has seemed so evident here, that many American swimmers seem to be kicking out from the blocks with a case of nerves? Or -- to put it another way -- a lack of confidence.

This is of course difficult to assess and fix.

But.

Preparing for a high-level swim meet involves putting down a block of work, then resting — “tapering” is the word of art — before the meet itself. It used to be that Americans would taper for maybe one major meet a year. Many swimmers from around the world have adopted a different approach, and as a consequence their times — and perhaps more important, world rankings — reflect that.

It’s a fair question whether you can be feeling your confident best when, before the meet, you look at the rankings and, as a for instance, find yourself in the 20s or 30s.

— How do the coaches get better? Not just the athletes themselves but the coaches. USA Swimming runs a decentralized system in which an athlete trains with a coach of his or her choice; the governing body gets everyone together for meets; thus, what responsibility do the coaches bear for this performance and what, if anything, to do about it?

Frank Busch, USA Swimming’s national team director, would never criticize any of his swimmers in public. It's for sure not his style.

In an interview with the USA Swimming website, he singled out for praise Ledecky, Lochte, Franklin and some newcomers, including Ryan Murphy (his 52.18 in the Wednesday prelims leading off the mixed 4x100 medley would have won the 100 back, and he touched second Thursday in his heat and overall in the 200 back semis) as well as Katie McLaughlin (sixth in Thursday night’s 200 butterfly after being ahead going into the final turn, American Cammile Adams taking second).

Even so, Busch said here, in a question about the challenge for the rest of the meet, “I think if you haven’t had a great swim, how do you turn that around and make it better next time, as opposed to saying, ‘I’m not ready.’ That’s always a challenge for our athletes.”

— Make no mistake: world-class swimming is a professional sport. But this is not the NFL nor NBA. The challenges for many U.S. athletes of monetizing their talents remain considerable — as well as the time balance required to make money and still train hard.

Here is the balance: is doing a clinic for, say, $2,000 or $5,000 worth it?

Here, too, is reality: $2,000 or $5,000 might, for many U.S. swimmers, be a considerable payday.

Lochte, of course, who for years has been a worldwide sensation, has no such worries.

His issue, just like Michael Phelps, is that time always wins out in the end. Phelps is 30. Lochte turned 31 on Monday.

Absent some freak development, Rio 2016 figures to mark the end, or at least the beginning of the end.

Lochte said late Thursday that he is now one of the team's oldest swimmers, wryly noting that he could remember when he was one of the youngest.

He also said that Phelps -- who is swimming this week at the U.S. nationals -- had texted to say that he, Lochte, now had to step up.

"Whenever Michael says anything to any swimmer, you’re going to take it to heart just because he is the world’s greatest swimmer that ever lived," Lochte said.

"The things that he said -- saying, 'You've got to be a team leader, you've got to put Team USA on your shoulders, you've got to carry them through this meet' -- I definitely took that to heart."

The 200 IM that Lochte won Thursday made for his 24th medal at a world championships, more than anyone except Phelps, with 33.

Earlier this week, Lochte finished fourth in the 200 free, just as he had done at the 2013 Barcelona worlds and the 2012 London Games.

In the 200 IM, though, he cruised. He finished the 200 IM semifinals with the best qualifying time, 1:56.81, and that despite an easy glide to the wall at the end.

In Thursday’s finals, he was down nine-hundredths of a second at 150 meters, then poured it on to run down Pereira.

Lochte’s gold made for the fourth straight time he has won the 200 IM at the worlds — after Rome 2009, Shanghai 2011 and Barcelona 2013. Going back to the Montreal 2005 worlds, Thursday’s race also marked his sixth medal in a row in the event (silver, Melbourne 2007; bronze, 2005).

Only Grant Hackett had ever won an event at four editions of the worlds running; he won four 1500s.

Lochte has also won three medals at the Olympic Games in the 200 IM.

Acknowledging Ledecky's "phenomenal" performance, Lochte said, "I am definitely really humbled about getting that win tonight and hopefully I got the ball rolling for Team USA."

Pereira, meanwhile, won two bronze medals two years ago in Barcelona. Now he has silver. He led the race at 100 and 150 meters.

“I couldn’t keep up at the end with Ryan,” he said. “But I’ve still got a whole year.”

Thrilled just to be at a great show

KAZAN, Russia — The best female swimmers in the world cover 50 meters, swimming the backstroke, in about 27 seconds. Fatema Abdulmohsen Ahmed Almahme, a 16-year-old from Bahrain, did it in 40.4 in the first-round heats here Wednesday morning. She was last in a field of 52. Afterward, she was thrilled.

“It’s the biggest achievement,” she said, “because I have only been swimming for one year. I never thought about making it here.”

If it’s indisputable that the track and field world championships mark the coming together of the entire world, with athletes from 214 nations, let it be said that Kazan 2015 boasts swimmers from 189. That's up from 177 at the last edition of the swim world championships, in Barcelona in 2013.

Senegal? Mongolia? Tajikistan? Here.

Kosovo? Ethiopia? Laos? Here.

Papua New Guinea? Nicaragua? Namibia? Yep.

Swimming’s diversity outreach — what in Olympic circles is called “universality” — is but a key facet of how all water sports have grown in popularity around the world. With exactly one year to go until the Aug. 5, 2016, start of the Rio Olympics, the water has never been more popular and never enjoyed so many opportunities.

Owing in measure to Michael Phelps, "aquatics," as the sport with its many disciples is known, has now — along with gymnastics — joined track and field in what the International Olympic Committee considers an “A” sport in terms of revenue, the top of the Olympic ladder.

Almost everyone everywhere can walk or run. Swimming, synchro, diving and water polo are obviously more problematic. FINA, swimming’s international governing body, has made concerted efforts in recent years to innovate, to make being in and around the water far more interesting and entertaining — lessons that play out in the experience not just of being in but at the meet.

These are lessons that world-class track and field, among other sports, could stand to learn.

Two years ago, for instance, FINA introduced the high-dive event, its take on action sports. It proved a huge success and now stands at the forefront of any serious discussion about additions to the Olympic program.

There are events for men and women; the men jump off a 88-foot tower, the height of a nine-story building, the women off one just a little lower. It's mandatory to enter the water feet-first -- head-first might, literally, kill you.

In Wednesday's men's final at the Kazanka River, Britain's Gary Hunt won gold. One of his dives: back three somersaults with four twists.

Tuesday's women's final saw American Rachelle Simpson -- who won the high-dive World Cup here a year ago -- take first place.

FINA has also introduced mixed relays, men and women swimming together. That produced two world records in short order Wednesday morning -- first the Russian team, moments later the Americans. At night, the British team won, in 3:41.71, yet another world record.

Halfway through these championships, there have been 10 swimming world records. In Barcelona two years ago, just six.

In the pool Wednesday night, Katie Ledecky added to her amazing run, winning the 200 free in 1:55.16. Italy's Federica Pellegrini took second, American Missy Franklin third.

Ledecky had already won the 400 and 1500; in the 1500, she set two world records, one in the prelims, another in the finals.

The 800, later this week, would appear to be a lock. Understand what Ledecky is doing: not since the great Australian Shane Gould in the 1970s has there been a female swimmer with the range, versatility, power -- and in-pool remorselessness, swimming with zero fear -- that Ledecky is showing here.

Britain's Adam Peaty claimed the 50 breaststroke. He became the first man ever to win the 50 and 100 breaststrokes at a worlds.

China's Sun Yang took the 800 free -- zero surprise, his third straight 800 worlds title. Earlier in the meet, he won the 400 and took second in the 200.

For spectators, Kazan 2015 has featured DJs before the evening sessions whose job it it to amp things up; cheerleaders; mascots (of course, in this instance snow leopards Itil and Alsu); and a “Boss Cam,” the Russian version of a Kiss Cam.

Outside Kazan Arena, the soccer stadium that for the run of the championships features a competition and training pool, there is what’s called “FINA Park,” with food, souvenirs and, pretty much every night, live music. The idea is to turn a swim meet into an experience with your friends or family; FINA Park has been jammed; crowds swarmed the gates just before noon Wednesday, waiting for the park to open.

The athletes — at least those who swim in the evening semifinals and finals — get individually introduced after walking from the plastic chairs in the call room through a dark hall and then out into the noise and light. It's the swimming version of coming in from the baseball bullpen.

It makes for drama and, of course, helps tell the crowd who to root for.

Even for those whose moment in the spotlight is in the morning prelims, it’s all good.

Qatar’s Noah Al-Khulaifi finished last in the men’s 200 fly prelims, at 2:26.71; it was a long way from there up the ranking list to Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh, who recorded the top qualifying time, 1:53.53, and would go on Wednesday night to win the finals over South Africa's Chad le Clos. No matter. Noah, a teen-ager who had felt sick on the plane trip in from Moscow to Kazan, was adopted as a crowd favorite, including an American contingent led by the U.S. standout Conor Dwyer’s parents, Pat and Jeanne.

For 20-year-old Mark Hoare of the African nation of Swaziland, finishing at 59.62 in the 100 free prelims — in 106th place, more than 11 seconds behind the top qualifier, China’s Ning Zelao, at 48.11 — couldn’t have been better.

“It’s an experience unlike any other,” he said. “It’s a great experience meeting the other athletes. And FINA has made us all feel equal.”

He said of his moment under the lights, “I was thinking who at home is watching me. They had better be watching me!”

These championships indisputably underscore the increasingly global reach of swimming. Consider the start lists for the first two heats (of seven) of the men’s 100 backstroke -- not freestyle, the most basic stroke, but the even more technically demanding backstroke.

Heat 1: Lebanon, Kenya, Nicaragua, Uganda, Bangladesh, Qatar, Myanmar, Bahrain, Jordan and the Cook Islands.

Heat 2: Botswana, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Mexico, Macedonia, Jamaica, Morocco, Namibia, the United Arab Emirates and the Dominican Republic.

There is, of course, the matter of swimming. And it is hard to swim 100 meters — two laps of the pool.

Ethiopia’s Robel Kiros Habte, at 1:04.41, finished 115th — out of 115 swimmers — in the 100 free prelims. “The last 50 meters was much too hard for me,” he said.

Then again, he vowed to stick with it: “I want to be famous.”

Giordon Harris of the Marshall Islands finished 99th, in 57.75. This was his third FINA worlds, after Barcelona 2013 and Shanghai 2011. He also competed in the London 2012 Games, in the 50 free, placing 46th.

“This is all I look forward to, all I train for,” he said. “I get to see people I idolize, or I have on posters,” ticking off Brazil’s Cesar Cielho and American Ryan Lochte. “These are the people I see on YouTube. Here I get to swim in the same pool, ride the same bus. It’s a dream come true.”

The Marshall Islands is a remote place, out in the Pacific Ocean, roughly 2,100 miles southwest of Honolulu.

Harris, 22, hails from an atoll called Ebeye. To swim in a pool, he has to go to another island, Kwajalein, 35 miles away, where there’s a U.S. army base. He’s allowed in to the pool, which he said is the only one in the country, three days a week. “Other than that,” he said, “I swim in a lagoon.”

In Bahrain, 16-year-old Fatema said, it’s a struggle still for young women to swim competitively: “Not many know about it.”

When she goes home, she will be in 11th grade. Here, she said, “I learned many things. I have to learn from the best to one day be like them.”

Of fear, failure and world-record brilliance

KAZAN, Russia — Bobbing in the warmup pool before the start of Tuesday night’s finals, a black-and-red swim cap bore this declaration: “Your own worst enemy is your fear.”

For years and years, swimmers from other nations — even if they didn’t want to admit it and would never say so in public — feared the mighty U.S. swim team. This 2015 world championships is only three days old, and there is plenty of racing to go, but one thing, more than anything, is already clear: the fear is gone.

The rest of the world has for sure caught up to the United States.

Indeed, swimmers from other countries have proven themselves better than the Americans, and in a number of disciplines, a dramatic trend that has emerged as the No. 1 story at Kazan 2015, and could hold significant consequence for next year’s Rio 2016 Olympics.

On Monday, the U.S. went medal-less in three finals.

On Tuesday, American swimmers came up empty in the men’s 200 freestyle — Ryan Lochte, fourth — and the women’s 100 backstroke — Missy Franklin, fifth, and Kathleen Baker, eighth.

The Americans did salvage one non-Katie Ledecky medal — Matt Grevers’ third-place in the men’s 100 backstroke. Grevers had been the defending champion in the 100 back from Barcelona 2013 and the London 2012 Games.

His bronze marked the first medal of the meet for U.S. men.

The 18-year-old Ledecky has stamped herself at these championships as the No. 1 swimmer in the world. Zero question. Every race is a chance at a world record.

On Tuesday night, Ledecky demolished the world record in the 1500 free final that she herself had set in the prelims the day before.

Monday: 15:27.71.

Tuesday: 15:25.48, 2.23 seconds faster. She won the race by more than 14 seconds over Lauren Boyle of New Zealand, 15:40.14.

That made for her ninth world record — in the 1500, 800 or 400 — since 2013. Ninth!

Ledecky’s stats verge on the outrageous.

Her time Tuesday is a full 24-plus seconds under the qualifying mark for U.S. men for the 2016 Olympic Trials, 15:49.99. A Belgian journalist, Philippe Vande Weyer, who knows the Olympic scene well, said on his Twitter feed that Ledecky’s time Tuesday would have won the Belgian men’s championships by 52 seconds.

Some 29 minutes after the 1500 final, Ledecky was back into the water for a punishing double, bidding to qualify for Wednesday night’s 200 free final. Eighth at 100, seventh at 150, she raced the last 50 meters hard, finishing third in her heat for the sixth-best time over the two semis, 1:56.76.

Franklin advanced as well, with the second-best time, 1:56.37.

Of the 1500, Ledecky said afterward, she thought during the race about both her grandfathers, both passed away, mindful that her two grandmothers were “watching carefully” back home: “I thought about my grandpas at one point in the race, and dug deep.”

Before the 200, she said, her “legs kind of felt like jello,” surprising because, as she said, “I barely kicked in the mile,” what swimmers call the 1500.

Jello, for those intrigued by what someone with Ledecky’s cool uses for fuel, had not been on the menu beforehand. At noon, she’d had pesto pasta, rice, green beans and some bread. At 2:45, more pasta: “I always have pasta before a final.”

In the 200, she said, “I dove in and my arms felt really really sore and my legs felt better than my arms, so I knew I had to kick. I toughed my way through that race and I couldn’t be more pleased with how that went.”

She also said of her brutal double and world-record 1500 swim, “I wasn’t afraid to fail.”

The U.S. medal count after three days: four, two gold, two bronze.

Ledecky has both golds: the 1500 and 400, which she won Sunday in setting a meet (but not world) record. The bronze medals: Grevers and the women’s 4x100 relay team.

Great Britain and Australia lead the medals count, each with five.

Britain’s emergence offers emphatic proof of how the world has changed. At the Barcelona 2013 worlds, the British won one medal, a bronze.

You have to go back to 1986, and the days of Communism, to find a swim worlds in which the U.S. did not win the overall medal count. That year, the East Germans won, with 30; the Americans came in second, with 24.

There is zero doubt that over the decades the U.S. has been the dominant power in world championships swimming. Coming into Kazan 2015, the U.S. had won the most medals (and by far), with 418; Australia had 152. Same goes for the gold-medal count: U.S. 231, Australia 58.

The Americans’ real edge has come in world championship years the year before an Olympics. See, for instance, 2011 Shanghai (29 medals, 16 gold); 2007 Melbourne (36 medals, 20 gold, as Michael Phelps geared up for Beijing 2008); Barcelona 2003 (28 overall, 11 gold).

Phelps is not in Kazan as part of the fallout from his drunk-driving case.

Meanwhile, evidence of how much better the rest of the world has become was all around Tuesday:

— Seven world records have already been set at Kazan 2015, bettering the mark set by the end of  Barcelona two years ago, where there were six. Ledecky has two; the rest of the world, five.

— Before Tuesday, no female swimmer from New Zealand had ever won a gold or silver at the worlds in any event. Boyle and Zoe Baker had been the only women from New Zealand to win a worlds medal — bronze, five in all. Boyle’s silver in the 1500 made for a first.

— In Tuesday morning’s prelims of the men’s 50 breaststroke, South Africa’s Cameron Van Der Burgh broke the world record. At night, Britain’s Adam Peaty — in the first of two semifinals — lowered it again, down to 26.42.

American Kevin Cordes set an American record in the semis, 26.76. Peaty, in the next lane, went a full three-tenths faster over a mere 50 meters.

Peaty, afterward: "The morning swim was easy, and I knew this was just the 50-meter race, not my main event," the 100, which he has already won here, "so I didn’t have any pressure. This made this semi also really easy for me."

— The top three in the men’s 200 free: James Guy of Britain, 1:45.14; China’s Sun Yang, 1:45.20; Germany’s Paul Biedermann, 1:45.38.

Guy’s victory not only denied Sun the chance for a four-peat: the 400 (which Sun won on Sunday), as well as the 800 and 1500, in which he is a strong favorite.

The win also established Guy as one of the middle-distance favorites for 2016. He took second, behind Sun, on Sunday in the 400.

Guy is 19 years old, and will now hold forever the distinction of being the first British male ever to win a worlds freestyle title. He said of winning, “I’ve never thought I could reach that -- beyond making the final. With so many great swimmers around, Chad [le Clos] ... Ryan, Sun who are my idols … My tactics were just swim my own race, concentrate on myself and that worked.”

For his part, Lochte’s fourth matched the fourths he registered in the 200 from Barcelona 2013 worlds as well as the London 2012 Olympics in the 200 free. He said afterward he just needed to train harder.

— Grevers' third-place Tuesday, in 52.66, came in a tight race. He finished behind Mitchell Larkin of Australia, 52.40, and Camille Lacourt of France, 52.48.

Grevers, after: “I’m very surprised I lost the back half of that. That’s not how I train. I train to finish. I don’t train to die. I practice living, not dying. So dying there was very disappointing.”

— Franklin is the gold medalist in the 100 back at London 2012 and Barcelona 2013 (as well as gold medalist in the 200 free two years ago). On Tuesday night’s in the 100 back, she managed 59.4, more than a second behind winner Emily Seebohm of Australia, 58.26. Second, another Australian, Madison Wilson. Third, Denmark’s Mie Oe Nielsen. Fourth, China’s Fu Yuanhui.

Franklin said, “I have literally done everything I could have possibly done the past two months to be prepared for this meet. No excuses. I was at 59.4 and that’s obviously where I am right now.”

— Here was the field for the women’s 100 breaststroke final: Italy, Japan, Jamaica, Russia, Lithuania, China, Sweden and Iceland. Jamaica! Iceland!

Russia’s Yulia Efimova won the race, in 1:05.66, and Kazan Arena rocked hard a few minutes later as the crowd sang the national anthem.

It’s well-known in swim circles that Efimova trained in Los Angeles, at USC. Iceland’s Hrafnhildur Luthersdottir trained in Florida, at Gainesville.

This sort of thing has been going on for years and years, and it’s not going to change, nor should it — athletes from all over the world coming to the United States for opportunity.

At the same time, a variety of factors might explain why the Americans find themselves looking up at the end of races and not finding the familiar “1” next to the red, white and blue:

— Phelps isn’t here. He’s not only the best swimmer in U.S. history but had emerged in recent years as a genuine team leader.

— The Americans have long had a disdain for non-Olympic events such as the 50 sprints (everything but free: fly, breast, back) and new events such as mixed relays. The conversation should be had, and soon, about whether that focus deserves intense review.

Outside of Nathan Adrian, it’s hard to pick anyone in the U.S. sprint program who seems like a sure lock for a medal, men or women.

— The U.S. team for Kazan 2015 was picked a year ago. There were athletes who raced at the recent Pan-American Games in Toronto who should have been here, and vice-versa.

Such a selection policy deserves, again, review.

— And, perhaps most of all, there’s the fear factor. Or, better, the lack of it.

Tyler Clary, the 200 backstroke gold medalist from London 2012, finished 12th in the 200 fly semifinals Tuesday, an event in which one American — Tom Shields, eighth — qualified for the finals.

For years, Phelps ruled the 200 fly. Now, until proven otherwise, le Clos is the man. The South African turned in a solid second-place effort in Tuesday’s semis, behind Hungarian veteran Laszlo Cheh.

Clary said after the race that, big picture, Kazan 2015 ought to be considered a “rehearsal” for Rio 2016, that results here “ought to be taken with a grain of salt.”

He said, “Regardless of what the medal counts might look like, and we’re not having the most excellent meet Team USA has ever had … at the end of the day, all that matters is how we do next summer.”

Asked if the rest of the world had caught up with the Americans, Clary said, “I can agree with that.”

The next question — did swimmers from everywhere else no long fear the mighty Americans?

“It’s not my place,” he said, “to comment on the psyche of other swimmers. Maybe, maybe not.” He paused. “They certainly don’t swim like it.”

An indisputable U.S. swim bright spot: Katie Ledecky

KAZAN, Russia — For Katie Ledecky, every single race on the big stage becomes an opportunity to make the superbly difficult look so easy.

On Monday, in the preliminary rounds of the women’s 1500 freestyle, the 30-lap race that swimmers call the mile, Ledecky broke her own world record, touching in 15:27.71, 65-hundredths faster than she had gone last August at the Pan Pacific championships in Australia.

That 15:27.71 also obliterated — by almost nine seconds — the former world championships (and then-world record) mark of 15:36.53, which Ledecky set on the way to winning gold in Barcelona in 2013.

A 1500 world-record in the prelims! Afterward, Ledecky said it came easy.

Asked how she felt on a scale of 1 to 10, she laughed and said, in awesome Spinal Tap-stye, “Eleven.”

She added, “You know, I feel great. It’s pretty — it’s probably one of the coolest world records I have broken. Each one is really unique. But just sort of how relaxed I was, and how calm.”

For the U.S. team, Ledecky’s performance offered a measure of salvation at a meet that is, just two days in, proving true the knowing predictions beforehand behind the scenes.

Not one American swimmer earned so much as a medal Monday night.

There were three finals Monday night in events that also get raced at an Olympics: the women's 200 individual medley, the men's 100 breaststroke and women's 100 butterfly.

In the women's 200 IM, Katinka Hosszu of Hungary charged to a new world record, 2:06.12, three-hundredths of a second faster than the mark Ariana Kukors had set at the Rome 2009 championships. The two Americans in the race finished fourth (Maya Di Rado) and seventh (Melanie Margalis).

The men's 100 breast and women's 100 fly finals? Those went off without any American qualifiers. None. Nada. Zip.

In that 100 fly, Sweden's Sarah Sjostrom, for the second time in two days, set a world record. On Sunday, she went 55.74; Monday, 55.64.

The men's 50 fly final (like the women's 1500 a non-Olympic event)? Again, no U.S. qualifier.

The results Monday night came after the U.S. men’s 4x100 relay team finished 11th in Sunday’s prelims, a stunning turn — inexplicable, really — that left the Americans out of Sunday night’s final, won by France.

Also Sunday, there were two U.S. swimmers in the men's 400 free final, Connor Jaeger and Michael McBroom. Neither made it to the top three.

At the London 2012 Games, U.S. swimmers earned medals in that men's 400 free (Peter Vanderkaay), men's 100 breast (Brendan Hansen), women's 100 fly (Dana Vollmer) and women's 200 IM (Caitlin Leverenz).

Not one of those swimmers -- for various reasons -- is in Kazan.

To be clear, there are six more nights of racing in Kazan, and the U.S. is assuredly in line to take home medals. On Monday night, these U.S. swimmers moved on to Tuesday's finals: Matt Grevers in the 100 backstroke; Ryan Lochte, 200 free; Missy Franklin and Kathleen Baker, 100 back.

At the same time, David Plummer, the Barcelona 2013 world championship silver medalist in the 100 back, did not qualify. Nor did Jessica Hardy in the 100 breast, a race in which in 2009 she set a then-world record; at Barcelona 2013, she took bronze in the event. Nor did Conor Dwyer in the 200 free; in Barcelona, he won silver in the race.

It has been so long on the world and Olympic stage since the since the U.S. team came up empty-handed like it did in Monday's finals that experienced hands could not recall the last time it happened — evidence not only that the Americans need to step up their efforts aiming toward Rio 2016 but that the rest of the world has gotten a lot more capable.

The U.S. team has been so good for so long that it seems almost heresy to acknowledge there might be vulnerability if not weakness. But, aiming toward Rio 2016, concern would appear to be justified.

In prior years, the worlds the year before an Olympics has proven a solid gauge of U.S. swim performance at the forthcoming Games. For instance, in Shanghai in 2011, U.S. swimmers won 29 medals, 16 gold; in London in 2012, 31 and 16.

In the lead-up to Kazan 2015, however, it had become evident the U.S. team was not going to be at its best at these championships. For one, Michael Phelps is not here. For another, this team was picked a year ago, a strategy that may now deserve extensive review.

By “not at its best,” let’s be clear — that’s relative to the high standards traditionally set by U.S. swimming.

That would be tolerable, in a sense, if there weren't warning signs for a year from now. Going down the line: where are the results that would suggest bright U.S. prospects for medals in Rio in events such as the women’s 200 breaststroke and 100 butterfly? The men’s 100 breast? And more.

The question ought to be posed now, with 12 months to go before Rio: what — if anything — is the plan?

This needs to be asked, too, because it is just as much part of the package: what expectation is there for being part of a U.S. national team?

Too, as the sport has grown, it’s evident that many American swimmers are keen to be considered eminently “professional” athletes. That's all well and good. But in the context of preparing for world and Olympic meets: what does that mean? Finances are one thing but this takes work, and a lot. Whose job is it to get them to produce when the time is right?

Amid all this, there is Ledecky.

Three years ago, at the London 2012 Games, she won the 800.

Two years ago to the day, August 3, she broke the world record in the 800 at the Barcelona 2013 world championships.

All in, before Monday, Ledecky had set seven world records — two in the 400, two in the 800, three in the 1500.

On Sunday here, she won the 400 — just shy of world-record pace but in a new world championships time, 3:59.13.

When she woke up Monday morning, looking out at her plan for the week, Ledecky could see the 1500, the 800 and, as well, the 200 free — with the complication that the 1500 final and the rounds of the 200 are about 20 minutes apart on Tuesday.

And, probably, the 4x200 relay, too.

Her coach, Bruce Gemmel, laid out the plan for the 1500 heat Monday morning: the first 900 meters easy, the next 300 building speed, the final 300 Ledecky’s choice — however she felt, fast or not.

The idea was to take the race as something of a building block for the rest of the week.

“I was, like, barely even focusing on this morning’s swim,” she would say later. “I was just so relaxed. Like all my teammates knew I was going 900 easy, 300 build, 300 choice. So I think they’re probably in the most shock.”

The numbers verge on the surreal:

— Her first 400 meters: 4:06.41. Her last 400: 4:05.87.

— That 4:06.41? That would have put her sixth in the 400 she won Sunday night.

— At 800, she was at 8:15.29. That’s 1. second-best in the world in 2015, behind only the 8:11.21 that Ledecky herself put up, 2. in the top-10 all-time if had itself been an 800 free and 3. faster than Janet Evans ever swam in the 800. That would be the same Janet Evans who held the world record in the 800 for 19 years, from 1989 until 2008.

— Ledecky's last lap? 29.47. That was her second-fastest lap of the race; she opened the first 50 with a 28.56.

— Ledecky won the heat by 28.81 seconds over Jessica Ashwood of Australia. All Ashwood did in the race was lower her own Australian record, to 15:56.52 from 15:56.86, which she had put down at a grand prix meet in Townsville, Australia, on June 20.

-- Swimvortex.com, an authority on the sport, pointed out that Ledecky's 15:27.71 is eight-hundredths of a second faster than the time in which Australia's Steven Holland set the world record to win the Commonwealth Games men's 1500 in 1975.

-- Nick Zaccardi of NBCOlympics.com took to his Twitter feed to point out: Ledecky, age 18, 15.27.71. Lochte, age 19 in the 1500 at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials, 15:28.37.

— American Katy Campbell finished eighth in the same heat Monday morning, in 16:39.98, three lanes over from Ledecky. That Katy Campbell is here belies the obvious: she is a world-class swimmer. There’s no way to say this delicately, so here goes: Katie Ledecky lapped Katy Campbell.

Asked afterward if it is hard to race someone who is obviously so much better, Campbell said, “I think for everyone it is,” quickly adding that Ledecky is “such a lovely and warm person” and “if you can get close to her,” meaning time-wise in the pool, “you’re one of the best, too.”

Here is what is truly scary about Ledecky’s swim: she not only made it look easy, she said it was easy.

“To be honest,” she said, “it did feel pretty easy. I wasn’t kicking much. I think breaking that record is just a testament to the work I have put in, the shape that I’m in right now that, you know, I was able to do that.

“I’m in quite a bit of shock right now,” she said.

Once more, she wasn’t kicking that much!

“My pulling has improved a lot,” she said, which is swim talk for moving the body in the water with your arms.

“You know, shout out to Andrew Gemmel,” a leading U.S. open-water swimmer who is also the son of her coach, Bruce. “He’s the fastest puller in the world. And I think, you know, having Bruce as a coach, you do a little bit more pulling.

“You know,” she said, “I do kick a lot for a distance swimmer, and I think I did kind of decide to rest my legs a little bit and see what I could do just pulling.”

See what I could do just pulling! Only a world record.

Asked when she knew she was on record pace, Ledecky said, “I realized kind of toward the end because I could see people, you know, waving. I could see where my parents and brother and uncle were sitting, and I could see them waving as well. It didn’t even like spur me on it all.

“I was just — I didn’t want to get up and race even harder, because I felt like if I just maintained the same pace I was holding that maybe I would still get under it. If I didn’t, I wasn’t really expecting it.”

Someone asked if, now that she had broken the world record, Ledecky planned to take it easier in Tuesday night’s final, concentrating on just winning the race.

“Not necessarily,” she said, adding that the plan is to “swim it pretty similar to how I swam it this morning, maybe a little faster. Again, I didn’t put much focus on this, this morning — so maybe I shouldn’t do that tomorrow, either.”

A minute or two later, she said the 20 minutes between the 1500 and the 200 “should be plenty of time” to “get a good warm-down in between,” emphasizing, “So I’ll be fine.”

She also said, “In finals, there’s always a little bit more energy and excitement. I have never been somebody who swims slower at finals. So hopefully I can be right on that or a little better.

“You never know.”

No Michael Phelps but Katie Ledecky is so good

KAZAN, Russia — No Michael Phelps but when you have Katie Ledecky, you get records. So maybe the only ones happier than Ledecky after she set a world championships record Sunday night in the 400-meter freestyle was, well, everyone who  wondered, exactly, what this meet would be like without Phelps, the one and only. All sports need big stars, and in the absence of Phelps, beyond doubt the biggest name in swim history, Ledecky showed Sunday — again — why she is one of the most gifted, truly thrilling athletes in the Olympic scene.

Moreover, and perhaps just in time for a world turned too-skeptical about Olympic sports because of story after story of athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs, track and field again engulfed over the weekend in a potentially wide-ranging scandal, with Katie Ledecky there’s never a doping worry. Take it to the bank: she is 110 percent racing clean.

Ledecky raced to victory in 3:59.13, breaking the world championships record by two-hundredths of a second. Her time, the third-fastest ever, was just a beat or two shy of her own world record, 3:58.37.

Her race marked the much-anticipated highlight of the first of eight nights of racing from Kazan 2015. Also Sunday night:

— In the semifinals of the women’s 100 butterfly, Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom did set a world-record, going 55.74, breaking the mark of 55.98 that American Dana Vollmer set at the London 2012 Olympics.

— In the second semifinal of the men’s 50 breaststroke, Britain’s Adam Peaty also set a championship mark, 58.18, just moments after South Africa’s Cameron van der Burgh had set the mark at 58.49 in semifinal one. Peaty holds the world record, 57.92, set in April at the British nationals.

— In the men’s 400 free, China’s Sun Yang — who last year served a three-month doping ban — reclaimed his place on the world stage, winning emphatically in 3:42.58. After touching first, he bellowed in exultation and wagged his index finger to remind one and all who, in men’s distance, is No. 1.

At the 2013 worlds in Barcelona, Sun won the 400, 800 and 1500 frees.

For swim geeks, this freaky note: Sun’s time was precisely the same, to the second, that Ian Thorpe hit to win the 400 free at the 2003 world championships.

Speaking to reporters afterward, Sun first played it supremely cool:

“First of all, I would like to offer congratulations to my country. They just won the bid for 2022. I would like to take this opportunity to promote these Olympic Games and to jog attention from media worldwide.”

Then, asked about his doping matter, he delivered a mini-soliloquy — but only after asking first what country the journalist asking the question was from (Switzerland).

“I don’t understand,” he said, “why the media pays this much attention to this. The world always thinks that whenever a Chinese athlete gets a good result, we have used some drugs. For Chinese athletes, we are training very hard, as are athletes in other countries.

“There is absolutely no doubt that … doping cases are happening in other countries as well, for example the Australia team. But I don’t understand why the media pay so much attention and over-promote this story. I think,” he said, “it’s a lack of respect.”

A moment later, he added, “I hope media all over the world can have a fair attitude toward Chinese athletes. Don’t treat us as the enemy. Treat us fairly.”

— As Sunday night’s racing wound to a close, the Australian women’s 4x100 relay team — no allegation of anything amiss — set another championship mark, winning big in 3:31.48, 24-hundredths under the old mark, set by the Netherlands at the 2009 Rome championships. Here the Dutch took second, in 3:33.67. The Americans, with Missy Franklin swimming leadoff, took third, in 3:34.61.

As for Phelps, with 22 Olympic medals, 18 gold:

You think the U.S. effort missed him Sunday? The U.S. men’s 4x100 relay team — a perennial medal contender in an event that is for Phelps virtually a crusade for red, white and blue pride, one in which he typically swims lead-off — finished 11th in Sunday morning’s prelims, in 3:16.01, nowhere near good enough to make the top-eight for the nighttime finals.

That marked the first time, dating to 1973, the American men missed the world championship final of a 4x100 free. Indeed, with one exception, 2001 in Fukuoka, Japan, the Americans had made the 4x100 podium; in that 2001 race, the Americans  finished third but ended up getting disqualified for using a swimmer whose name was not on the entry list.

Meanwhile, the Australian men also got shut out; the Aussies finished 13th in Sunday’s qualifying, at 3:16.34.

So another first: Kazan 2015 made for the first worlds at which neither the Americans nor Australians would medal in the men’s 4x100 relay.

To underscore the import of Sunday’s subpar relay performance and the challenge ahead for the U.S. men’s 4x100 relay:

Taking out the 2001 DQ: that 3:16.01 made for the slowest by a U.S. 4x100 relay team at a world championships since 1998, 3:16.69.

It ought to be abundantly clear now to USA Swimming officials that there needs to be, for the relay, this strategy: an A team, the one that swims in the night finals, and an A-minus squad for the morning prelims, the one that at least gets you top-eight. In addition, there needs to be A-plus training and preparation — qualities that clearly were not Sunday in evidence.

Relying on anything else — you need four guys who can swim 48 seconds, consistently — simply won’t do, given the way the rest of the world has caught up.

Consider the eight teams in Sunday’s final: Poland, Japan, Italy, Russia, Brazil, France, Canada and China.

France won, just as in London 2012 and Barcelona 2013, here in 3:10.74. Russia, pushed by a screaming home crowd, grabbed second, in 3:11.19. Italy took third, in 3:12.53, its first 4x100 worlds medal since 2007.

Moreover, the wisdom of keeping Phelps home seriously has to — once again — be questioned. He has done his out-of-the-pool time, part of the deal sparked by his drunk-driving suspension. The value of not having him here, months later and after he has undergone weeks of isolation and reflection that seem life-changing, is — what? Particularly when Phelps, given his import in world-class relays, will be swimming this very same week at the U.S. championships in San Antonio?

Where is the logic? How does not having Phelps here further serve him? Or U.S. interests, swim and Olympic?

There had been great hopes from many in influential swim circles that Phelps and USA Swimming would be able to find a way to get him here to Kazan 2015. Again, all sports need stars. It’s that elemental. And he assuredly would have loved to have been here. In the midst of his self-proclaimed retirement, he sat out the 2013 worlds, in Barcelona — though he was there, at the meet, texting in real time to longtime coach Bob Bowman thoughts on the U.S. relay 4x100 relay as it finished second.

No compromise could be reached, however.

The good news for the Americans: 11th is good enough to make the Rio 2016 relay line-up (top 12).

The not good: U.S. prospects for the 2016 Games in the 4x100 relay can now best be described as a — in a word — situation.

Without Phelps, it was always clear coming into Kazan that expectations would fall on Ledecky, Franklin and Ryan Lochte to command the spotlight for the U.S. team.

Every time Ledecky swims, the world record is at risk, and in races where such marks had been standards for many years, in particular the 400, 800 and 1500. She is due to swim the 200 free here as well.

For anyone else, this would be crazy talk; a world-record possibility in every swim.

Ledecky, though, is so crazy good that she turns races that are something like four, eight or 14 minutes long into incredible theater.

With Ledecky on the blocks, it’s not whether she’s going to win. She’s a near lock to win. The issue now is by how much, and will there be a meet or world record?

In Sunday morning’s prelims, she flirted with the world record through 200 meters, then eased off, treating the final 200 like a training swim. She touched first in her heat in the prelim in 4:01.73, the morning’s fastest time. Jessica Ashwood of Australia turned in the morning’s second-best: it was 2.74 seconds behind Ledecky.

Going into Sunday night, the 400 world record stood at 3:58.37. Ledecky set that mark last Aug. 23, at the Pan Pacific championships in Gold Coast, Australia. Before that, the world record had stood at 3:58.86; Ledecky did that at the U.S. championships just 14 days beforehand.

In case the numbers all get to be too much: last year, Ledecky set the world record, then lowered it again by about a half-second, all within two weeks.

Some more big-picture context:

Camille Muffat of France won the 400 at the London 2012 Olympics. Muffat was among 10 people killed in a helicopter crash in March in Argentina; her death lent additional poignancy to Sunday’s race.

Before Ledecky went off last year, the 400 mark had stood for five years — Federica Pellegrini, 3:59.15, at the Rome 2009 championships, the first women’s 400 sub-4 swim in history. Before that, it had been lowered only five times in the years since Janet Evans went 4:03.85 in September, 1988, at the Seoul Olympics.

Ledecky won the 800 at London 2012.

In Barcelona in 2013, she won the 400, 800 and 1500. She and Sun were named female and male athletes of the meet.

At last year’s Pan Pacs, she won four freestyle events — 200, 400, 800 and 1500 — and added gold in the 4x200 relay.

That’s one way to measure her progression, how ridiculously good she has become.

Here’s another:

Her 400 prelim times at major meets over the past three years: Barcelona, 4:03.05. PanPacs: 4:03.09. Kazan: 4:01.73.

Or how about this:

Going into Sunday's race, of the all-time top-10 performances in the 400, Ledecky held six of them, including five of the top six. All five are under 4 minutes.

On Sunday night, she put herself in position for another world mark. She was a second under world record pace at 200 meters, 18-hundredths under at 300.

On the seventh lap, she slipped just a little bit — 31-flat, her only lap in 31. Coming home, she reached out for a 29.57, good enough for that world championships record, just shy of the world mark.

Ashwood finished third, at 4:03.34. Sharon Van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands took second, in 4:03.02.

It’s a testament to Ledecky’s excellence that when she “only” breaks the world championships record but not the world record itself, she gets asked if she’s disappointed — and if it’s annoying or, in its way, flattering to be asked if she gets disappointed.

“It is very flattering,” she said late Sunday. “You know, it’s a great honor for me that you expect or hope for a world record each time I swim. Because, I guess, that’s based on what I have done in the past.

“That is a pretty neat thing for me. I won’t get annoyed at any of you. You keep doing what you do and I will keep doing what I do.”

Which is race super-fast — 3:59.13, Ledecky said, is “a swim I can be really happy with.”

Free Michael Phelps

This space believes in making things simple and easy. So here it is: Michael Phelps should swim at the 2015 world championships in Kazan, Russia. USA Swimming suspended Phelps for six months in the aftermath of his drunk-driving incident in Maryland last September. That suspension has run, and he will open his 2015 season by swimming this week at a meet in Mesa, Arizona. In addition to that suspension, Phelps and USA Swimming agreed — and “agreed” is putting a spin on it — that he would not be on the U.S. team in Kazan. Now the time has come to fix that.

For every reason you can come up with to keep Phelps off the Kazan team, there are better reasons to send him.

First and foremost, there is this:

The American story is, and forever will be, one of redemption. This is who we are. This is the classic, everlasting story of our country.

In the United States of America, we get not only a second chance, but a third, a fourth, a fifth and more.

If anyone has earned that chance, it’s Michael Phelps.

Phelps is one of the great sports heroes of our time, an imperfect human being — we all are — who has won 22 Olympic medals, 18 of them gold, inspiring literally millions of boys and girls and grown-ups, too.

About this there can be no debate.

Our funny face pic yesterday at #theboysandgirlsclub What a blast!

A photo posted by Michael Phelps (@m_phelps00) on Mar 27, 2015 at 8:00am PDT

Disclaimer: I co-wrote Phelps’ 2008 best-selling book. In writing this column, I have not shared even one word with him.

To recap how we got here, and why there must be reconsideration — not just for Phelps but for USA Swimming and even the U.S. Olympic Committee — that Phelps go to Russia:

On Sept. 30, 2014, Phelps was stopped by Maryland police going 84 in a 45 mph zone. His blood-alcohol level registered 0.14.

This was Phelps’ second DUI offense in 10 years.

For legal purposes, the first DUI, when Phelps was a teenager, was completely immaterial during the second case. For the record, he did 18 months probation. USA Swimming took no action.

In 2009, a few months after going 8-for-8 at the Beijing Games, Phelps, then 23, was photographed with his face in a bong. The picture created a major international stir. USA Swimming suspended him for three months.

Then came the arrest last September. Phelps was arrested amid the media frenzy ignited by the cases involving the NFL players Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson and, to a lesser extent, the soccer star Hope Solo, each enveloped in a domestic violence incident.

To be clear, is Phelps super-fortunate no one got hurt? Or worse? Yes, a thousand times over.

Now: was Phelps involved in a domestic violence case? No.

Was it thus apples to apples? No.

Was it his incredibly poor judgment to get behind the wheel of a car, impaired, when the harsh media spotlight had turned on high-profile athletes? Yes.

Was there thus pressure on USA Swimming and the USOC, especially given the intensity of the focus on the Rice and Peterson matters, in particular, to bring the hammer down on Phelps? Absolutely.

Was Phelps in any sort of position, given that intensity, to argue at the time — even though he and everyone else involved knew that the best thing for him was to go to treatment, which was where he was, in fact, headed — about any of the elements of the six-month plus Kazan deal? Hardly.

Was there, as this space pointed out at the time, a rush to judgment? You bet.

When can it be said that a rush to judgment ever proves positive?

Now that time has run:

Rice and the Baltimore Ravens have settled his grievance for $1.588 million, and Rice is eligible to play again in the NFL.

Peterson is eligible for reinstatement on Wednesday.

The domestic violence charges against Solo were dismissed in January. A few days later, she was back in the news in connection with a drunken driving incident involving her husband, ex-NFL player Jerramy Stevens, that led US Soccer to suspend her for 30 days.

At the Algarve Cup in Portugal in March, a key tune-up for this summer’s women’s World Cup, who was that making the incredible late-game save to preserve her 81st international shutout in leading the United States over France, 2-0, for the title? For sure — Solo.

To be clear, one of the reasons to see Phelps swim in Kazan is what would likely happen in the pool. Reports from swim insiders say Phelps is hugely motivated — he is said to be practicing the way he did in 2007 and 2008 — and there is perhaps no sight in sports like Phelps roaring down the pool in the back half of his races.

There is also this: the U.S. team needs Phelps if it has any hopes of winning the 400 freestyle relay the way it did in Beijing in 2008. That’s the race he watched — from the stands — with dismay at the 2013 world championships in Barcelona. You only get so many chances to practice this relay before Rio in 2016.

Beyond that, there is this:

In a weird way, the September DUI arrest may have been the best thing that ever happened to Phelps. It got him to treatment. It forced him to look, and hard, at who he is and what he is doing.

In the months since leaving treatment, he has gotten engaged. He has been a model citizen. Everyone who has been in contact with him has remarked about how he has grown up.

In London, and that was before all this, Phelps was a veteran team leader at the 2012 Games. Wouldn’t you want Phelps 2.0, and this kind of hard-won life experience, on your team in Kazan?

Having reviewed the USA Swimming selection criteria, it is abundantly plain that it would indeed be a complex process — a number of dominoes would need to fall in just the right way — to get Phelps on the Kazan team. But, as always, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Now for some real-life politics, because there are plenty of intersecting currents to factor into the dynamic as well:

USA Swimming and FINA, the international governing body for swimming, are currently not — shall we say — on the best of terms. There are a variety of reasons why, but for this conversation it’s enough to leave it at this: things are business-like.

And to not have Phelps in Russia? FINA is not happy to begin with. Now you throw in the prospect that the best American swimmer ever would not be at its marquee event?

Everyone knows, meanwhile, that the USOC wants to put forward a Summer Games bid for 2024.

Not everyone knows, however, that John Leonard, who is an influential U.S. swim coach, has for months now been leading a largely behind-the-scenes campaign aimed at reforming FINA.

FINA has opted not to respond in public to the Leonard campaign.

The point of bringing up Leonard’s campaign here is not to debate its merits. It’s to put it in a different context.

The president of FINA, Julio Cesar Maglione of Uruguay, was just this past weekend elected interim president of the Pan-American Sports Organization.

Maglione is a key and dependable ally of International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach’s.

Maglione is 79. Elected FINA president in 2009, he was re-elected in 2013. Now there is serious talk that he wants a third term; to do so would require a rules change.

Leonard’s campaign is wondering, among other things, how this can be.

The answer: it’s all part of a complex geopolitical strategy involving interests beyond Maglione with close ties to the IOC president. This strategy might take all of a presumed third Maglione third term to play out. Or just part of it. In that scenario, which leadership at USA Swimming understands full well already, U.S. influence at FINA's top levels might well be further considerably diminished.

This is no small matter. For revenue purposes, swimming is now what's called a Tier "A" sport in the Olympic movement, along with gymnastics and track and field -- in large measure because of the import of Phelps.

Leonard is doing what he justifiably feels is in the right.

In the meantime, the Leonard campaign is not doing a 2024 U.S. Olympic bid any favors — see above, FINA not happy with USA Swimming to begin with.

Moving on:

Understand always that Vladimir Putin made the first call to Bach when Bach was elected IOC president. These Kazan swim championships are a key element in Putin’s strategy to make Russia a world sports destination — along with Sochi 2014 and soccer’s 2018 World Cup.

To reiterate: to not have the biggest star in swimming at the biggest show in swimming? How in the world, come voting time for the 2024 bid, is that going to help the United States? Don’t fool yourselves. Russia is a big deal in the Olympic sphere and people have long memories when it comes time to vote.

Moving on once more:

Katie Ledecky, Missy Franklin and Ryan Lochte are awesome swimmers. But without Phelps, who in the United States is likely to watch a swim world championships — from Kazan or anywhere — on television?

Answer: virtually no one.

Need evidence? Lochte is, truly, a great guy. But there's a reason his reality-TV show was quickly canceled.

If Phelps doesn’t swim in Kazan, it’s a simple matter to look at the calendar and see he would have to swim instead at the U.S. nationals in San Antonio. They’re Aug. 6-10. The swim schedule in Kazan runs Aug. 2-9. Why the two events run simultaneously is a long, and separate, story.

A San Antonio nationals would feature Phelps, Allison Schmitt, Natalie Coughlin and dozens of others — apologies — recognizable mostly to their coaches and parents.

Phelps has for more than a dozen years now said his goal is to grow the sport of swimming. How would limiting him to San Antonio accomplish any of that?

That’s not just a rhetorical question.

It’s way better all around for leadership at USA Swimming to take a deep breath, work out the complexities of the selection process, acknowledge the obvious and get the guy who virtually by himself since 2000 has elevated swimming into the top tier in the Olympic scene back where he belongs.

With the best in the world.

The Phelps suspension: why the rush to judgment?

Cross-country ski champion Petter Northug was sentenced last Thursday in court in Norway to 50 days behind bars after being convicted of drunk driving. Which brings us to Michael Phelps, the 24/7 media spin cycle we live in and the rush to judgment that led to the significant suspension USA Swimming levied against Phelps for his recent DUI arrest in Baltimore. What was to be gained by USA Swimming rushing to this judgment? More — what was lost by waiting?

Clearly, USA Swimming did what it felt like it needed to do. In some quarters, it is getting kudos for taking decisive action. But was it appropriate — or, better, right?

At issue are several thoroughly basic principles.

One, the media is not running anything. We can’t even run ourselves. Who cares if we are shouting? Or tweeting? Seriously. This is what is called a diversity of opinion. The counterpoint to that is called calm leadership.

Two, bad facts make for bad law. This is elemental. Phelps’ case is not one on which to make, or rest, broad-based policy.

Three, as everyone who has read Orwell knows, all the animals on the farm are not equal. Or are they? Which is it going to be?

To recap:

Phelps, 29, is charged with DUI, excessive speed and crossing double lane lines. Police stopped him outside the Fort McHenry tunnel at 1:40 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 30, saying he was going 84 in a 45 zone; he had spent the hours before at the Horseshoe Casino. Police say his blood alcohol level was 0.14; the state’s legal limit is 0.08. Phelps is due to appear in court on Nov. 19.

The arrest is Phelps’ second for drunk driving. He pleaded guilty to driving while impaired in 2004.

USA Swimming did not suspend him after the 2004 case.

Five years ago, British tabloids published a photo of Phelps with his face in a bong.

USA Swimming suspended him in 2009 for three months.

For those unfamiliar with cross-country skiing, Northug won four medals, two gold, at the Vancouver 2010 Games. When you include medals won at world championships, he is right up there with the legendary Bjorn Daehlie.

Northug, 28, crashed his Audi while driving the first week of May. His blood alcohol level was more than eight times the Norwegian legal limit, according to Reuters. Norway’s limit is 0.02. A friend who was in the car was slightly hurt. Northug was not injured.

Northug was also fined $30,000 and banned from driving for life; Associated Press said that “normally means a minimum of five years.”

The accident and aftermath have been front-page news for months in winter sports-crazed Norway. Northug said, according to reports, that the episode would “follow me throughout my whole life.”

Here is the kicker:

The Norwegian Ski Assn., according to AP, said it would not punish Northug because his accident “had nothing to do with competition or training.”

The association president, Erik Roeste, told the Norwegian news agency NTB, “It’s not in sports regulations to punish him from our side in any way.”

So how did USA Swimming come to sanction Phelps?

Through Section 304.3.19 of its rule book.

It allows sanctions for “any other material and intentional act, conduct or omission not provided for above, which is detrimental to the image or reputation of USA Swimming, a LSC (local swimming committee) or the sport of swimming.”

Six days after Phelps’ arrest, USA Swimming announced it had suspended him for six months and he had withdrawn, by mutual agreement with the federation, from the U.S. team for the 2015 world championships in Kazan Russia. He also agreed to forfeit a $1,750 USA Swimming stipend for six months.

Phelps’ arrest came amid the controversies that have enveloped the NFL and stirred headlines since the video surfaced — on Sept. 8 — of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee in a casino elevator. You can be sure that played a part in the decision-making at USA Swimming.

The hammer came the day after Phelps announced he was headed to a six-week, in-patient treatment program.

Even if you decide that this arrest warrants sanction — that’s an entire column in and of itself — what was the goal here?

To penalize Phelps? Deter him or others? Rehabilitate him? Make sure he doesn’t drive drunk again? Send a message — to him, others on the national team or other swimmers in clubs across the United States?

Why was it so important to suspend Phelps when not even a week had passed?

Did acting so quickly make it more — or less — likely to achieve the objective? Which, again, was what?

Isn’t it more likely that we were all left with one obvious reality? That USA Swimming acted get itself out of the spotlight -- or, more precisely, to cover its backside amid media pressure?

So, now what?

Did anyone watch Ryan Lochte’s reality TV show? In the realm of possibility: were there off-camera escapades that might now bring embarrassment to USA Swimming? Do you think TMZ is asleep at that switch? Really?

Further, are we all willing to believe there isn’t even one coach affiliated with USA Swimming, or one athlete anywhere in the United States with a DUI that has yet to come to light? Truly? How soon before one such case emerges? Would any such case bring embarrassment to the federation? How much embarrassment?

You see how problematic this is?

What about this: reasonable people can agree to disagree about whether USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus should or should not have drawn so much criticism earlier this year when he was nominated for the International Swimming Hall of Fame amid concern the federation should have done more to prevent sexual abuse by coaches.

In June, Wielgus formally apologized — four years after saying on national TV that he had nothing to apologize for.

Phelps apologized, too, and in short order after arrest.

These two scenarios admittedly are in many ways apples and oranges. However, the question is nonetheless worth posing, especially if you're asking forthright questions: big-picture, which of the two holds the greater potential to embarrass USA Swimming -- Phelps' situation, or Wielgus'?

The federation, it must be acknowledged, has taken undeniably constructive steps in reordering its safe sport policies. At the same time, right or not, fair or not, Wielgus found himself this summer in an uncomfortable spot.

So why is Phelps getting six months plus the Worlds?

The problem is there is no spelled-out policy here. A catch-all is not good enough.

Another problem: there is inconsistency in the broader U.S. Olympic sphere.

Compare:

Rule 4 of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn.’s code says: “USSA members shall maintain high standards of moral and ethical conduct, which includes self-control and responsible behavior, consideration for the physical and emotional well-being of others, and courtesy and good manners.”

In 2010, when then-USSA chief Bill Marolt was arrested for DUI — he took responsibility and apologized, just like Phelps — was he suspended? Hardly.

More current: Hope Solo, U.S. Soccer’s goaltender, is facing two counts of misdemeanor domestic violence linked to a June incident at Solo’s sister’s home in Kirkland, Washington.

In a September 23 Facebook post, Solo declared: “… I continue to maintain my innocence against these charges. And, once all the facts come to light and the legal process is concluded, I am confident that I will be fully exonerated.”

Not only has U.S. Soccer not suspended Solo, she has continued to play and, indeed, has once been honored with the captain’s armband.

USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun last month told USA Today, “Abuse in all forms is unacceptable. The allegations involving Ms. Solo are disturbing and are inconsistent with our expectations of Olympians. We have had discussions with U.S. Soccer and fully expect them to take action if it is determined that the allegations are true.”

Three things:

The reason U.S. Soccer hasn’t moved is because you can bet there would be a counter-move rooted in the 1978 Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act.

Solo’s case is yet to be decided in the courts. Yet USA Swimming took action even though Phelps’ matter is only at the arrest stage. He, just like Solo, is due the presumption of innocence.

Finally, this suspension was pushed through when Phelps was on his way to treatment. The skeptic might say Phelps is going to treatment in a bid to prove to the courts that he’s being proactive. Or maybe he is, genuinely, recognizing that, at 29, he needs help, and now is the time to get it.

The difference between the Solo and Phelps cases is that Phelps accepted the suspension. Query: on his way to six weeks away, did he really have any choice? Was he really going to fight that fight? Right then and there?

Now that it’s all said and done, maybe everyone ought to take a deep breath.

Near-term:

At the least, USA Swimming has gone one step too far with Phelps.

On the one hand, six months is arguably thoroughly arbitrary. For legal purposes, the first DUI is absolutely, totally irrelevant. (To show you further how arbitrary: what if Phelps were photographed now with his face in a bong pipe in Colorado, where -- along with Washington state -- pot is legal? Colorado, of all places, home of USA Swimming and the USOC. Things evolve.)

On the other, you can make a pretty strong argument for six months. Let’s be plain: there’s no excusing drunk driving and Phelps is profoundly lucky no one got hurt, or worse. Phelps’ blood-alcohol level was, again, 0.14, and that was not in the field — that was after he had been taken to the police station. He likely had to have been doing some serious drinking. A 200-pound male, about what Phelps weighs, would had to have had 12 drinks to blow a 0.152 after four hours of drinking, according to this chart.

Assuming there’s no wiggle room with the six months, the crux of what really ought to be at issue is the Worlds. Why beat Phelps up over the Worlds? It’s not at all clear that, after six weeks away from the pool, he would even be ready. But it’s just as easy to make the argument that he would be an asset post-treatment to the American team as not — after all, he was a veteran leader in London two years ago, and has increasingly related to younger swimmers.

Here’s one proposal:

After Phelps is done with his six-week, in-patient treatment program, and his court date is through, assuming a conviction but no custody time, he might consider moving to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He could eat, sleep, train and focus on nothing but himself and swimming — under the watch of USA Swimming and the USOC and, perhaps most important, the longtime "mom" at the training center, an old friend, Sherry Von Riesen.

If he proved himself a model citizen, then the ban on the Worlds could be rescinded.

Phelps has had only one coach, Bob Bowman. Bowman is in Baltimore. There would have to be some workarounds. Bowman could perhaps come to Colorado every couple weeks. There could be Skype sessions.

All this — Phelps as resident at the USOC training center, with no driving privileges for some period of time — could even be part of a court-ordered probationary term. Creative minds, you know, and all that.

Of course, this all assumes Phelps wants to keep swimming competitively. That is a big if. Post-treatment, who knows?

Long-term:

USA Swimming should strongly consider re-framing its policy for what is “detrimental to the image or reputation” of the federation. That is way, way, way too vague, and likely susceptible to serious legal challenge.

The other NGBs should take a look at what's going down here, too.

Arbitrary policy-making done in a rush is not constructive strategy. It may get you out of a jam. Or make it feel like you’re out. But not really. Life is way too complex. There’s always another turn, and it’s always unexpected.