Top 20 Most Significant Swimming Stories Of 2016: #17 – School’s Out/The Phelps Factor

SwimVortex continues a countdown of the most significant swimming stories of Olympic Year 2016. 

We started with progress, the heights of Katinka Hosszu and  the Canadian Comeback, turned to a lack of progress in The Swimming Selfie. Today, inspiration, ‘daring kids to dream’, the class of 2016 racing with the class of 2000. It became something of a media game at the Rio Games: where were you and how old were you when you first became aware of Phelps? And do you have a poster on the wall, a photo with the big man in your childhood album? Well, yes, they did.

No 17 – School’s Out, Schooling’s In: The Phelps Factor

Take Olympic champions Kyle Chalmers, Mack Horton, Gregorio Paltrinieri, Ryan Murphy, Adam Peaty, Dimitry Baladin and Joe Schooling and add in the last man ever to race side-by-side with Michael Phelps, Britain’s James Guy on butterfly, and you’re looking at a Class of 2016 that weighs into an under-fives club when it comes to where they were when the GOAT was rattling home to 5th at 15 in the 200m butterfly, Sydney 2000.

Schools out: at 31, Phelps took down the ‘oldest Olympic swim champ’ record, one that had stood to Duke Kahanamoku since 1920, before Anthony Ervin’s victory in the 50m freestyle 16 years after he claimed the first title at Sydney 2000 took the standard to 35 (more on all of that later in our series).

Schooling’s In – and how, Joe’s decisive victory in the 100m butterfly highlighting one of the big themes of the eight days of racing in Rio: The Phelps factor.

Three into one does got, say Michael Phelps and Lazslo Cseh in Rio – by Patrick B. Kraemer

Phelps shared silver with Chad Le Clos and Laszlo Cseh in a shared podium to end ’em all, Cseh an age peer of ‘The Alien’ and a much-admired man who has also inspired many. The American, at that point 22 gold medals to his name in Olympic waters, emerged to say of Schooling’s first and the generation on the rise at his fifth and swansong Games:

“I’m not happy, obviously, nobody likes to lose. But I’m proud of Joe. I wanted to change the sport of swimming. With the people we have in the sport now I think you are seeing it.”

One of his goals in the last two of his Olympic cycles had been to teach the next wave “to believe in themselves, to not be afraid to know that the sky is the limit”.

Well, job done, for Phelps and mentor Bob Bowman. They didn’t work with any on that list of names from the top line of this article but they did provide a guiding light: there in Rio for all to see was a high sea of self-confidence backed by process and preparation long in the planning from a gang of go-getters who cited Phelps and paid plaudits to an inspiration still in their midst and collecting the biggest treasury of the meet at his fifth Games. Said the followed:

“Daring kids to dream. That’s the only reason why I’m sitting here. I was a little kid with a dream.”

It became something of a media game at the Games: where were you and how old were you when you first became aware of Phelps? And do you have a poster on the wall, a photo with the big man in your childhood album.

Well yes, they did. Katie Ledecky has one; Daiya Seto and Ryan Murphy, too. A host of others had childhood Phelps stories to tell. And then there was Schooling, whose story sums up the the long-term meaning of Phelps.

When The Pupil Becomes The Master

The gold that got away from Phelps in 2016 was priceless. Schooling the pupil who became the master: 50.39 world textile best inside the iconic 50.40 of Ian Crocker that Phelps was never able to get to in a textile suit (who knows what might have happened in those summers of 2008 and 2009 had all things been equal and FINA had served its sport well – chances are he would have but we’ll never know).

Gold ahead of a triple silver fit for the silver screen: Phelps, Le Clos, Cseh – snap. 51.14 apiece. Producer: “I’ve had a great idea; we’ll get a kid from Singapore to win the Olympic 100 fly ahead of Phelps and Phelps will tie for silver with two of the biggest challengers of his career to mark the solo swansong of his 16 years as a giant of the Games … what dya think?” Backer: “Oh, shut up.”

As I wrote in Rio: … one fine day when we are no more, a reporter will sit in this spot and turn to a colleague sitting next to him and say ‘wow, that must have been pretty special’. And he’d be right. It was.” Coaches Sergio Lopez and Eddie Reese take a bow.

Laszlo Cseh, Chad Le Clos, Michael Phelps – the history men – by PBK

As Phelps collected medal No 27 of his career, Schooling picked up his first Olympic prize ever: a golden start for a man who met Phelps as boy and will cherish not only that moment but this one for the rest of his life. The race was the race, the gold the gold, but to walk along the burning deck with three giants of the sport, each with a silver and a golden smile for each other to go with it was the thing that Schooling may one day tell his children and their children about. Said a beaming Schooling:

“Just being beside him. Walking alongside him and celebrating, I will cherish that for the rest of my life.”

Schooling and Phelps first met in 2008, when the US team were based in Singapore for a training camp before the Beijing Olympic Games as the winner of six golds in 2004 prepared to pick up a record eight and race beyond the 36-year-old Spitzean height of seven.

“They came to the country club that I trained …

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