SYDNEY, 10 September 2003 — American record-breaker Michael Phelps said yesterday he was working on lowering Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe’s 200-meter and 400-meter freestyle world records at next year’s Athens Olympics.
The 18-year-old newly-crowned king of swimming won three individual golds, two silver and shattered five world records at the Barcelona World Championships in July. Phelps competed against multiworld recordholder Thorpe in only the 200m individual medley at Barcelona where he smashed the world record in finishing more than three seconds ahead of Thorpe.
Now Phelps wants to attack Thorpe’s world record times in his freestyle events at the Olympics. “We’ve been working on the freestyle events,” Phelps said in a teleconference from Baltimore yesterday. Phelps confirmed that he will in a Skins event in Sydney and the FINA shortcourse World Cup in Melbourne in November. “My 200 and 400 have improved pretty much over the past year and a lot can happen in a year so I think what the real (Olympic) event schedule will say I guess is top secret until (the US) trials,” he said.
“We’re just going to see what time brings and I guess if the time’s right and I’m prepared to swim the 400 and 200 then that’s what we’ll go with.” Phelps said he was eager to swim against Thorpe, who has dominated world swimming since 1998.
“Ian’s been extremely dominant over those events in the past since Sydney (Olympics) really,” he said. “I think there’re a lot of people out to beat him. He’s the man to beat right now and he’s been on top of the world for the past few years. I’m a big racer, I want to race the best and he is the best in those events so I don’t think there’s anybody else better than him.” Phelps set world records in the 200 butterfly, 200 individual medley (two), 100 butterfly and 400 individual medley at the World Championships.
