The Price of College

Missy Franklin and the Value of the Undergrad Degree To have problems like these... Option A: Accept a full scholarship to any university in America. Soak up school's eternal gratitude. Win many NCAA titles. Have time of your life. Option B: Accept prize money and untold endorsements. Win a few gold medals in London. Appear on Wheaties box. Earn far more than that college scholarship was "worth."

A champagne problem indeed. A truly diamond-studded dilemma... This is what is currently facing 16-year-old high school junior Missy Franklin. She's the best American female swimmer since Janet Evans, and she's earned this difficult choice by virtue of her astonishing talent. While I have never met the girl, everything I have seen, heard, and read indicates that she is a smart and grateful young athlete. I think she gets it, and I think she appreciates that there are worse problems to have.

It is a rare and privileged decision to face, yet it is hardly a can't-lose choice. The possibility of regret looms large on both sides. What if I win big in London and turn down millions that I might never see again? Just for the chance to have the college swimming experience? What if I take the plunge and accept the money and then get hurt? Or simply lose the fire or the mojo required to win gold medals? This is hardly NBA-contract guaranteed money. The real money in swimming (what little there is of it) is incentive-laden to the extreme. It's what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. Stop winning, stop earning...

Nonetheless, don't you wish you could have had such a choice at 16?

While this question affects a miniscule population of the obscenely talented, their rare choice shines a light on a much wider question, one that affects every college student who does not have the luxury of a scholarship or parents wealthy enough to pay their way. That is - what am I paying for? And, more importantly, is it worth it?

That's the real question of value, isn't it? The essential balancing act that determines the price of everything. In every story written about athletes turning pro and forgoing college, you tend to see the same numbers bandied about. The price of college is often cited as "as much as $200,000" - meaning the tuition of top schools being around fifty grand a year these days. But this is a prime example of basing value on the literal rather than the actual. Something we all do, lazily, because it's easier. How much did Speedo offer you? $100K? Well, a Stanford scholarship is "worth" twice that.

Apologies for the continued use of quotation marks around the word "worth", but this number is ridiculous. Here's why: there is nothing more overpriced in America today than the cost of an undergraduate degree. If universities were stocks, I would short liberal arts colleges with every penny I have. What you get out is very often not what you put in. Or at least, not until that debt is paid off so many years later... It's a bad investment for its current going rate.

This argument is hardly news. It's one of the many grievances of the angry folks trying to occupy Wall Street. Higher education costs too much and it doesn't offer any decent return. Due to this imbalance, three things could happen: 1. Tuition prices go down. 2. Post-graduation salaries go up. 3. Many kids stop attending college altogether. Any guess on the most likely scenario?

So, this would make Missy Franklin's choice much easier, right? The value of that scholarship is absurdly inflated, so why not take the endorsement and prize money - income that is actual.

But there's the sad irony. While the cost of an undergraduate degree, in tuition terms, is grossly overpriced, the value of the collegiate athletic experience may be the most undervalued thing on any college campus. Hell, they're cutting many of the programs that offer the highest return!

College swimmers, where do you think you're going to meet the lead to your first employer? Where might you meet the friend you later start a business with? What network will you tap into if you wind up out of work at 30 and needing an in? Clue: Don't expect your degree to open many doors...

I know, these aren't exactly variables that should enter the mind of a talented 16-year-old. She should be thinking about the experience, the friendships that will be forged, the energy of an NCAA team standing as one, shoulder to shoulder along the edge of a pool, waving a teammate home in the heat of a close race... These are things that are impossible to value is financial terms. Or are they? Because many of those moments can and will transfer into career-making opportunities.

Regret is not an emotion often admitted by elite athletes. When things don't go exactly as planned, you tend to hear the "I wouldn't change a thing" line, the "it made me who I am" denials. Fair enough. I wouldn't admit it either. But the precedent of regret after turning pro is hard to miss. Especially among female swimmers.

Back in the early 1990's, I was growing up alongside the Missy Franklin of that era, a breaststroke phenom named Anita Nall. A year apart, we were friends and teammates on the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. At the 1992 Olympic Trials, 15-year-old Anita broke the world record in the 200 breaststroke - twice in one day.  She was the golden girl of the moment, the young charmed face of the American team heading into the Barcelona Games. Faced with sudden professional opportunities, she took the money and decided to forgo her NCAA eligibility.

In Barcelona, she had a good meet. But not a great one... A best time and an American record in the 100 breast, good enough for silver. A gold as a part of the women's 4 x 100 medley relay. But in the 200 breast, the event she was expected to dominate, she was just slightly off her best. She missed the gold by 2-tenths of a second and had to settle for bronze. She was never the same swimmer after that. There were reasons, valid ones like chronic fatigue, but she had missed her window, by 23-100ths of a second.

An individual gold medal is where it's at, the price of admission really, if you're talking about a "pro" swimming career paying off. Sixteen years after Anita's near miss in Barcelona, another high school pro from NBAC was forced to face the same reality. In 2008, Katie Hoff arrived in Beijing with an albatross of expectations weighing over her. The female Phelps, we called her. It wasn't fair maybe, but she'd earned it. She was the best female swimmer on the planet in the early summer of 2008. But by late summer, after her Games had ended, Hoff, like Anita Nall, was no longer the same swimmer. They both exited the Olympics with three medals, none of them individual gold.

Of course, NBAC also produced the ultimate example, the one career scripted by the gods. In Olympic waters, not much has ever gone wrong for Michael Phelps. No need to recite the litany of greatest hits. The money he's made makes these pro vs college debates completely moot. But that took how many gold medals? Maybe that shooting star destiny awaits Missy Franklin in London. Maybe it won't be any decision at all. But more likely, it will come down to a difficult question of value.

College might be overpriced, but college swimming remains the deal of a lifetime.

Enabling Evil

Swimming through the darkness at Penn State... "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

The legend is dead. Six decades of winning football games made him a deity in a small and happy town. But for the last decade and more, Joe Paterno carried on in the presence of evil - and he did nothing. He knew. He knew as far back as 1998. And for the last 5,000 days, he has gone to sleep each night with this knowledge. Since Jerry Sandusky "retired" in 1999, in the wake of allegations of improper conduct with an underage boy inside Penn State's football facilities, Joe Paterno won 102 more football games. That was 12 years ago.

Maybe he tried to forget about it. Didn't ask questions he didn't want answers to... Three years later, he was reminded. In 2002, a graduate assistant caught Sandusky, again inside of Paterno's lair. He brought it to the legend. This time Paterno did the bare minimum. He reported it to his superior (wait, since when did Paterno have a superior in Happy Valley?) He legally covered his legendary ass, and he never followed up. Out of sight, out of mind yet again. Back to winning football games. Nine more years passed. How many more abuses happened in this time?

I realize this is supposed to be a site devoted to swimming. I realize the last thing our sport wants is for any connection to be made to this story. A story that is fast becoming the worst scandal in the history of sport... But like it or not, the swimming community can relate. We have been hit hard by this evilest of all human behavior. Perhaps there has never been a monster so evil in the coaching ranks of any sport, but there have been monsters of Sandusky's type in swimming. A year and a half ago, in April 2010, ABC's 20/20 aired that awful piece about coaching predators on pool decks. Reading with rage the horrors coming out of Happy Valley, it's impossible not to recall swimming's own brush with this same evil.

When we're confronted with this, we don't react rationally. It's impossible. Yesterday while walking my dog, I found myself entertaining violent fantasies of torture that I hoped would be inflicted on Jerry Sandusky. The darkest corners of my imagination lashing out, unable to process unfathomable actions... I don't think I am alone in having these thoughts.

We can feel comfort, or at least certainty, in our murderous rage in the presence of pure evil. But what about the enablers, the ones who stood by and let it happen by choosing to look the other way? Whether conscious or buried deep within the sub, their choice to do nothing amounts to blood on the hands. They were driving the getaway car. And those in the driver's seat also get tried for murder.

How to process Joe Paterno's role in this? How to process the role of those in swimming who might have been able to do something to prevent past horrors, but failed to do so... Parents, assistant coaches, administrators, who heard things, suspected, even saw things but did not reach for whistles. We know background checks are sometimes no more than futile attempts to distance ourselves from future guilt, like checking a waiver. Jerry Sandusky would have passed a background check. We also know that you can never predict these things, it will always be a sickening blindside. Yet, on that dark day when it arrives at your doorstep, what do you do?

Coaches, as a proud tribe, are selfless men and women with a passion to share their sport. Whether at the side of a field or a pool, this is a part of the job description, the core part. If you're ranking careers based on lives changed and differences made, coaching must surely be ranked among the very highest of professions. It is also a job that can attract the very worst. The sort of men who prey on those they're charged with protecting. The sort who deserve a circle of Hell lower than Dante's 9th circle of traitors.

At Penn State, there may have been many of these good and selfless men in the athletic department. Maybe there was just one whose evil, hiding in plain sight, was allowed to spread and triumph. But they allowed him to remain in their midst. They let it happen. Where does that rank them on the Great Scorecard?

I don't think Joe Paterno is a bad man. Six decades worth of good works as a coach must count for something. Yet here is how Joe Paterno will be remembered. Not for his 409 victories on the football field. Not for his "Grand Experiment" that actually took the academics of his student-athletes seriously. Not for his (prematurely) crowned sainthood in the state of Pennsylvania. Joe Paterno will now be remembered forever as this above all else: An enabler of a pedophile. Nothing more. That is now his legacy.

The rest has receded, faster than creation, into the footnotes of a legendary life.

State of Pay

Sports Illustrated and the Plot to Kill College Swimming (And the rest of the NCAA's Olympic sports...) The NCAA is broken. No breaking news there, folks have been shouting from the sidelines for decades about this inept institution of American sport. But the chorus is growing, the pitch raising a few octaves of outrage. There are long "important" stories emerging from the bastions of journalism. The sort of stories that make Athletic Directors sweat, make coaches cringe, and eventually, make the athletes themselves stand up and take action. This should be inspiring stuff. An uprising coming, college athletes finally speaking up and demanding an end to an unjust colonial past...

Careful what you wish for. This pay-for-play revolution against the NCAA might finally put a fair share of money into the pockets of the young men who earn so many millions for their schools. Those football players who pack 100,000 seat stadiums every fall Saturday, those basketball players who put the money-gushing Madness into March... It could also put a great many of the NCAA's non-revenue sports on life support, making men's college swimming an endangered species, much more so than it already is.

Last month, the Atlantic Monthly published a front page story entitled The Shame of College Sports. When Frank Deford (aka the Greatest Sportswriter in History) called it the "most important article ever written about college sports", the story quickly circulated through the mainstream media. In this exposé, by Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch, the NCAA was revealed as a "classic cartel" with their concept of amateurism a "cynical hoax." Most damningly, Branch exposes the utter fraud that surrounds the term "student-athlete." He points out that this long clung-to term was created with no educational reason whatsoever. It was coined to prevent college athletes from suing their schools for worker's compensation if they were injured on the field of play.

A damning indictment indeed. After reading it, I forwarded it along with passionate support for Branch's case. It was time to start paying these kids, time to strip the cartel of its shameful ways. Power to the players! Or something like that... And then, last week, Sports Illustrated picked up the cause. As they frequently do so well, SI decided to go beyond mere reporting and sought to map out a plan. If we could all agree the NCAA was broken, and if you read Branch's story it's virtually impossible to disagree, then what are we supposed to do to fix it?

SI's answer? Follow the money and start treating college sports like a business. Translation: screw any sport that doesn't make money for the school. Let them figure out how to pay their own way. If they can't figure out how to break even, then good riddance. Wait, what?

In a tone deaf treatise, the SI plan could fairly be termed the "Anti Olympic Sport Plan." This Moneyball Lite attempt at valuing collegiate sport across a broad and misunderstood spectrum could inflict deep wounds to a wide range of Olympic sports - ones long perfected at American colleges.  That doesn't seem to occur to, or at least bother, the sports lovers at SI. Here's how the usually great George Dohrmann described the loss of such sports and their supporters: "Traditionalists will bemoan the loss of some programs, claiming they provided a meaningful service to the university... (But) for the most part, non-revenue varsity sports serve only the participants and a small cadre of supporters." He maps out the savings possible in cutting such sports (ie swimming), and goes on to state that budget-less club sports "offer student-athletes an experience that is at least as rewarding."

Like a hit man who doesn't wish to know the names and backgrounds of the dead men walking on his hit list, the word "swimming" is never mentioned once in Dohrmann's article. (There is one swimmer pictured in the double-page collage of college athletes on the title page, but that's the extent of swimming's presence here...) Sports like wrestling and water polo, gymnastics and rowing, get name-checked in passing, but they too get dismissed as marginalized pastimes closer in character to Ultimate Frisbee than the Final Four. Perhaps hit man was an overly dramatic analogy. A better comparison: a heartless CEO who blindly fires large swathes of workers, no names please, in the cause of corporate efficiency.

For all of the NCAA's obvious sins, the uncomfortable fact remains that much of the money earned from the Big Two revenue-generators, football and basketball, helps pay the way for the rest of many athletic departments. Helps pay for your flights to the conference championships, your coaches' salaries, and most of all, the considerable daily costs of maintaining a 650,000 gallon world class aquatic facility. These things don't come cheap. And there are many who don't want to hear about the revenue-free value swimmers might bring to their college campuses as upstanding student-athletes.

There's the irony. Swimmers, as much as any other athlete, embody the term "student-athlete." It might have been coined with ulterior cynical motives way back when. And the phrase still might be a sham when it comes to so many college football and basketball players. But it remains an accurate and honorable way to describe collegiate aquatic athletes. Nonetheless, they produce zero revenue for a school. No one is paying to come watch your meets. Or at least, seldom and insignificant amounts. No TV networks are clamoring to air your exploits to a wider audience. (Even in the Age of Phelps, TV money for swimming continues to be negligible outside of the Olympics...) But you take a lot. Often into the millions a year for top teams. Yet, financially speaking, you give nothing back. This puts a bulls eye on swimmers' sculpted backs.

Through no fault of their own, the risk to college swimming remains a uniquely men's problem. Due to Title IX, women's sports remain well protected. This reverse gender inequity has led to some misguided resentment among many male swimmers. Don't blame your female teammates. They've earned - and deserve - those scholarships and security. If you want a villain, gentlemen, take aim at your school's football programs. The imbalance created by Title IX's gender equity requirements remains largely due to the fact that there will never be a comparable women's sport that swallows up so many scholarships and forever tips the balance.

But that brings it all back home. The paradox that leaves men's swimming gasping for air in uncertain seas... Your college swim team's very existence could be largely due to the money generated by your school's football and basketball teams. Your football and basketball teams' existence is founded on a dark colonial past (and present) that uses its players without regard for their off-the-field well-being or academic standing - and does not share with them the spoils that they earned.

As you can see, this could get ugly very quickly. The component of race becomes unavoidable. The perception could become one of non-revenue teams of predominantly white athletes being carried along by money-making teams of predominantly African American athletes. Even without that level of dare-to-tread discomfort, it is a situation of Haves and Haves Nots. With the added twist that the Haves don't really get to have what should fairly be coming to them.

Then of course, there's the looming question of that "free education." That scholarship that's worth, in some cases, in excess of $200,000, all told. The long favored argument of the never-pay-college-athletes camp... Much more on that in weeks to come, but suffice to say, it's neither "free" nor, in plenty of cases, an "education" at all.

Like most issues that matter, there is no clear path here, only complexity. A dose of Herman Cain cluelessness would be nice right now. If only we could reduce it to an easy-to-remember three digit solution... But the reality is that the NCAA has become a deeply flawed and corrupted institution with no idea how to repair itself. It is not doing right by its athletes. After reading Taylor Branch's piece in the Atlantic, I am convinced these athletes deserve a share of the money they generate for their schools. After reading SI's so-called solution, I'm worried that this eventuality could lead to a mass cutting of programs across college swimming, along with the rest of NCAA Olympic sports that do not generate a penny for their schools.

There must be a better way, some solution that rewards the young men who bring heaps of money and prestige to their schools, without punishing their fellow athletes who happen to compete in unmonetized contests. What about allowing the free market to do its thing? Open the door to endorsements for all. If you can make money from a third party, like say Gatorade or your local car dealership, more power to you. This would allow for the likes of Michael Phelps to have competed for the University of Michigan; it would eliminate that ridiculous threshold of fake professionalism that locks out some of the all-time best from competing on the NCAA stage. Just because they were fast enough, young enough, to be valued by companies eager to associate themselves with greatness...

SI published a side bar on this consideration as well. They call it the Free Market Plan, and count me as one of its advocates. I look forward to the day when a phenom like Missy Franklin does not have to make that absurd choice between taking money from a sponsor and swimming in college. Yet, before we all breath a sigh of relief and pour our faith in the invisible hand of the market, consider for a moment how college football might look if agents and boosters and the rest of the sport's slippery remora were actually allowed to put money in their players' pockets. You think things are corrupt now? Just wait until Auburn's next transfer Heisman quarterback can sell his services out in the open to every SEC school...

As the debate continues, in national magazines and athletic departments across the country, safe to say swimming won't be a priority on too many agendas. That is, until every fourth year, when the world decides to perk up and pay attention to the Olympic Games' most popular sport. And when that happens, I wonder how many will take the time to count how many of those world class aquatic specimens were produced in NCAA pools now earmarked for elimination?

The Steroid-Dealing, Ecstasy-Smuggling, Dead-Body-Burning Swim Coach

I was told to tread carefully. I was told that the man in the headline above could be litigious, and that he had deep pockets. There's also the matter of him burning and burying a dead body on his own property... During the trial when this dark detail emerged, an attorney said of this coach: "If he has a conscience, it would be a very hard thing to find." Fair warning. Careful what you write. I'll just tread in the facts. Here are some greatest hits:

- In 1997, Canadian swim coach Cecil Russell was banned for life from the sport for his lead role in an international steroid trafficking ring. In exchange for a reduced sentence, he agreed to testify in the murder trial of one of his associates.

- At that murder trial, Cecil Russell admitted under oath that he helped burn and bury the butchered body of the victim in a corn silo alongside his home outside of Toronto. After the disposal of said body, Russell and the murderer raked the area and made sure they disposed of any lingering evidence - in the form of bones and the victim's jewelry. In exchange for his testimony, Russell served just 201 days for his steroid crimes. His body-burning accomplice was convicted of first-degree murder.

- A few years later, Russell, banned but now coaching in Spain, was arrested on the pool deck on charges of possession with intent to distribute ecstasy. At the time he was coaching eventual Olympic medalist, Nina Jivanevskaia, of Spain. He spent four years in a Spanish prison. This was no small time drug bust; Russell had been the main player in a plot to import 500,000 tabs of E from Amsterdam, thru Canada, into the United States.

- In 2005, Russell's ban was lifted after he claimed he had been exonerated in the ecstasy case. The ban was reinstated in 2007 after a front page story in the Toronto Star revealed that he had misrepresented and managed to suppress facts surrounding his past crimes during his reinstatement hearing. Weeks after his second lifetime ban came down, Russell was seen back on the pool deck still coaching.

Here's another fact: Cecil Russell is also a very good swim coach. And because of this last fact, moral ambiguity muddies the present of a hard core criminal past. Despite the bans, he's never really stopped coaching, and when you get your swimmers to swim fast, as Russell does, it seems parents are willing to overlook any manner of past misdeeds. Reading those greatest hits in the headline, it's staggering to consider, but the scariest part of this true crime tale is that many parents are still behind him. They still want him to coach their children. Because he's good at it, never mind the man behind the curtain.

Welcome to the strange saga of the Dolphins Swim Club... A Toronto team loaded with Canadian Olympic Trials qualifiers, an A-list club team with a Russell-led history of producing top talent on the national and international level. This talent is led by Russell's own children: Colin and Sinead Russell, two of Canada's finest swimmers. Son, Colin, was an Olympian in 2008, a world class middle-distance freestyler. Daughter, Sinead, is even better. At 18-years-old, she was a finalist in the 100 back at the 2010 World Championships. Her lifetime best of 59.6 puts her right in the mix as a medal contender in London. Both children have reportedly spent much of their training time at the nearby University of Toronto, however, according to sources on the Canadian team, they still call their dad their coach. They're the two shining examples of Cecil Russell's success as a world class swim coach. And two young swimmers who find themselves in an immensely difficult position, thanks to the sins of their father.

The Dolphins are a team with a lot at stake in this Olympic year, five months from deciding Team Canada's London Olympians. Now is not the time for disrupting their training. Now's not the time to bother with annoying distractions like the outsized criminal past of their coach. And so, while parents hear of plenty of past evil, if they don't see it, they don't seem to care.

I spoke with Toronto Star reporter Randy Starkman, who has been tracking this story for years. Indeed, it was his front page story that caused Russell's second lifetime ban. He has been on deck with the Dolphins, spoken with Russell in person in front of his team, and was floored by what he found.

"It is by far the strangest story I've been involved with," says Starkman, who has covered every Olympics since the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Games. "The weirdest interview I've ever done. Sitting at a picnic table, asking Russell about all this stuff, with parents and kids walking by. You get the impression that they all think he's a good coach, that things have been blown out of proportion. Their kids are swimming faster, they like swimming for him, end of story."

No, not end of story. And considering where this story begins, it would be difficult to blow any of Russell's past out of proportion.

Needless to say, the rest of Swimming Canada shakes with shame and embarrassment at the continued presence of the rogue coach in their midst. Yet, they've continued to prove almost powerless in their enforcement capabilities. Plenty of efforts have been made, but with limited resources there is only so much they can do to physically enforce any bans. Recently, the Dolphins' regional federation, Swim Ontario, has placed the team under suspension. This caused the team to lose its coveted pool time. And that led to a howling uproar among Dolphins parents.

In an astonishing scene at a community hearing, this loss of pool time was labeled a "violation of their human rights." Said one parent at this council meeting: “Please keep in mind the impact your decisions may have on shaping their values and views." (Hello, pot, please meet mister kettle...)

While that derailed the team momentarily, recent reports confirm that they are now back in the water, training at one of Canada's finest facilities, the Etobicoke Olympium pool. It will take more than that to keep Russell away. Over the years, he's learned a few tricks of technicalities.

First, Cecil Russell is not technically listed as the head coach of Dolphins Swim Club. His wife, Erin, is. A distinction that leads to instant eye-rolling among swimmers and other coaches in Canada... Next, it's said that he now lists himself as a "personal coach" not a "club coach." Meaning, he's not a part of any team at all, merely a proven commodity as a coach who is happy to lend his services to those swimmers who approach him personally. Whether using a spousal front or an individual vs collective distinction, both of these strategies have been effective. What has also been effective is Russell's ability to doggedly wait out the bad press, the roving spotlight that continues to glare over the shocking facts of his history. A coach to the core, it's clear he refuses to be denied the pursuit of his greatest passion.

"Nothing stops the guy," says Starkman. "That's the real tragedy here -- every athlete has to follow the anti-doping code. As most make almost no money, they have to be cleaner than clean. And then we have this coach, a guy who has been convicted of major drug offenses, still leading them."

And so it falls to the parents. The tunnel vision of an ambitious mom and dad cannot be underestimated. Those my-kid-only blinders that refuse to acknowledge anything outside of the immediate perception of what is good for MY kid... There is nothing else. And when that perception happens to include an Olympic dream on the cusp of being fulfilled, who has time for things like morals and ethics?

Best of luck to Cecil Russell's swimmers and devoted parents as the Trials approach. And good luck living with yourself.

Comeback Junkies

He left the press conference for his more famous friend. The one who had more gold medals than any countryman before him. He had a few too, was also among Australia's all-time greats, but by comparison, his news didn't feel all that newsworthy. Another comeback. By another Olympic champion. Welcome aboard, Michael Klim. The comeback trail is crowded these days, packed with aquatic icons who can't quite stay away...

When Ian Thorpe announced his intentions, it was sponsored by Richard Branson, as the Virgin mega-mind used the Thorpedo's return as a fine opportunity to announce Virgin Blue's latest international route. (You didn't think Thorpe was actually going to train for London in Abu Dhabi, did you?) When Michael Klim announced his own comeback, he chose a bit less corporate pomp. His venue? A comedy radio show, with a handful of local TV news cameras crowded into the studio.

Eleven years ago at the Sydney Games, these two were elevated to god-like stature Down Under. I remember an office tower in downtown Sydney whose entire 50 stories on one side was covered in a long picture of a pool, with Thorpe and Klim, along with (the still retired) Susie O'Neill swimming up lanes stretching hundreds of feet into the air. (Just one example; probably plenty...) Now, three Games removed, their legend-status engraved for all-time, these Aussie gents are hooked again, and they're not alone.

Stateside, have a look at the list of confirmed comebackers back on the sauce: Janet Evans, Brendan Hansen, Anthony Ervin, Ed Moses. And those are just the Olympic champs back in the mix. Rumors have swirled about an Ian Crocker comeback. (Still no official paperwork filed, according to USA Swimming...) And at the risk of starting a rumor, word is that Aaron Peirsol has yet to file his retirement paperwork. Perhaps leaving a door to Trials slightly ajar...

Across the pond, France's drama-soaked freestyle queen, Laure Manaudou, is immersed in a comeback of her own. England's ageless sprint ace, Mark Foster, is said to be contemplating another crack at it on home soil. And who could blame him? He's the male Brit version of Dara Torres. Both obscenely ripped sprint specimens who should not be allowed to look so mockingly good into their 40's.

Maybe it's Torres who's to blame for all these second acts. Did she make it look too damn easy? Would anyone be surprised to see her on the blocks in London too? She'll be 45 next summer. Back in 2000, a 15-year-old Michael Phelps used to call her "mom." A dozen years later, Missy Franklin could refer to her as "grandma."

Should this spate of comebacks be christened 'Torres Syndrome'? Surely, the thought must have crossed Janet Evans' mind as she considered her return to competitive waters. Evans was twice the swimmer Torres was. No comparison. Back in 1988, when Janet was the greatest female swimmer on the planet, Torres was a relay swimmer, earning a single bronze as a member of the women's 4x100 free. There's no question that Torres has been a compelling example for all these folks. The question is - what kind of example has she set?

You read about these comebacks and the lines are all the same. It's for the love of the sport... The fire still burns... I have unfinished business... I wanted to be a part of the Olympics just once more... Or as Klim put it recently to Craig Lord of Swim News: "We're all doing it for the same reason: swimming was a big part of our lives and we still feel it."

But what is it that you feel? Because this culture of comebacks sounds an awful lot like a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, a crew of relapsed junkies who just happen to be hooked on a drug of pure Olympism. It's hard to imagine two more polar opposite clans. The heroin addict and the Olympic champion. At distant ends of the spectrum of society's respect. One group, pitied and reviled, the other, praised on the ultimate sporting pedestal. Yet at the extremes, we always find similarities...

Consider: For both groups, the junkie and the Olympian, the "it" is two-fold, and exactly the same. They miss the high, for one. And as good as a heroin high must surely feel, it can't compare to the high of standing on top of an Olympic podium. But that's only part of it. The bigger part, the essential part, is about the lifestyle. It's a common refrain among ex-addicts. They talk of the purity of purpose, of the single-mindedness that gets them through each day. Where the rest of the world has daily to-do lists, headaches to confront and check off each and every day, the addict has only one concern: how to continue the high.

As does the swimmer back on the Olympic trail. All those worldly concerns that invaded your life after retirement? Your job, your family, your bills. Back on the backburner! Because as each of these comebackers knows, as every swimmer who's ever appeared in any Olympics knows, getting to the Games demands total sacrificial commitment. To the point of setting aside the rest of your life and acknowledging it for what it is - distractions. Distractions that get in the way of the one thing you care about more than anything else... That high. That feeling of invincibility, of total bliss, when there is nothing but the now, nothing but the passion to get what you need, what you've had before, and what you must have again...

Junkies are reviled, and rightly so, because their need and their bliss is self-destructive and false. Olympians, at the other end, are praised because that same need is believed to come from a pure and true place. They are not destroying their bodies, but elevating them to ultimate levels of perfection. But the motivation, the drive, the personality is all too similar.

Years ago, when Aussie great Susie O'Neill (remember, the one on that Sydney building not making a comeback?) retired, a reporter asked her what she would miss most about swimming. Her answer was honest and heartbreaking. She said: "I'll miss never being the best in the world at anything else ever again."

That's a hard addiction to kick. As her fellow Olympic champions, now immersed in comebacks, know all too well...

Hot Water

Fran Crippen, One Year Later The water was 88 degrees, the air almost 100. Like swimming through soup, under an unyielding Shanghai summer sun. If you'd been tanning on the beach, a quick dip in these waters would not cool you off. If you were planning on racing 25km, over 15 miles, in these conditions, forget about it. Reckless Endangerment would be the first two words to come to mind. Wikipedia defines this term as such: "A person commits the crime of reckless endangerment if the person recklessly engages in conduct which creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person." Sounds about right.

So, back in July at the World Championships, what exactly was FINA doing, allowing the world's greatest open water swimmers to compete in water this hot? As Team USA's Alex Meyer said at the time: "It's like, did you not learn your lesson? Do you not remember what happened last time?"

Yes, last time. One year ago this Sunday. The day that Fran Crippen died, in water cooler than this, in a race near Dubai. On the eve of this tragic anniversary, it feels appropriate to take a look at exactly what has changed in the sport Fran died for -- and what has not. The temperature of the water being most troubling of all...

I sought out Germany's Thomas Lurz for some perspective. Lurz, in case you're a follower of only what happens in the pool, is open water's reigning king, a three-time winner of Swimming World's Open Water Swimmer of the Year, and the favorite for gold next year in London. In Shanghai at Worlds, he won gold in the 10km race. A few days later, he was one of many who pulled out of the 25km race, refusing to enter water that hot, with dark memories of that October day in Dubai. When Crippen never emerged from those waters, Lurz was one of the guys who charged back in to search for his missing friend.

When I emailed him, this was the first line of his reply: "Some things changed, but still not enough... Still no temperature limits."

How could this be? We all realize that there were many factors that contributed to Crippen's death -- from the negligence of race organizers in Dubai to the lack of basic safety requirements in sanctioned open water events. But at its core, wasn't it about the conditions? About extreme exertion in a very very hot environment, without considering the potentially disastrous consequences?

In Shanghai, the official response from FINA was that the proposed temperature limits were "a guideline, not a rule." Translation: Making, and then breaking, rules brings legal accountability. Setting, and then disregarding, guidelines brings, well, a shrug. Make it a judgement call and you're in the clear. Make it a rule and it's your ass on the line.

FINA's supreme ruler (sorry, 'Executive Director') Cornel Marculescu followed with the political 'we're working it', saying that FINA and the IOC are working with a New Zealand university on establishing a clear temperature limit, adding that "the target is to be ready by the end of this year and it will be included in the rules for 2012 and the Olympics."

Ok... But is a university study really necessary to confirm a range that's already abundantly clear to the athletes in the water? Said Lurz: "A limit between 17-28C (63-83F) would be great. Perhaps then you can make a 0.5 degree (range of error) up and down to get the race started, but a race under 16C (61F) and over 29 (84F) shouldn't be started." Like the one in Shanghai, which wasn't even close to this proposed range...

Before this turns into a FINA-bashing fest, some credit is due. Lurz was quick to point out that there have indeed been a great many changes to open water events across the globe. He notes that there are more safety boats on courses than ever before. He cited a race in Cancun as one impressive example, as scuba divers were positioned throughout the course, particularly around the turning buoys where there are often the greatest threats to safety.

Unfortunately, low-lights remain at certain destinations. With dry understatement, he noted that "Hong Kong is a nice place, but swimming inside the shark nets would be nice." And in Santos, Brazil, he paints a nasty picture of diseased water: "Not so nice. Dirty water with huge pieces of wood with nails on it. Dead fish, turtles, and rats." One can only hope that tetanus shots were available at the finish.

Anyone familiar with the wild west history of open water swimming knows that this sort of thing sometimes comes with the territory. In her incredible memoir, Swimming to Antarctica, Lynne Cox writes of stomach-turning aquatic adventures, including a race in the Nile River, strewn with animal carcasses, that unsurprisingly resulted in a severe case of dysentery.

Still, that was then, and the adventures of Cox and other frontiersmen and women are a different game. The challenge and danger of the unknown is the point. It is about overcoming and reaching, eventually, slowly, excruciatingly, the other shore, no matter how long it takes. It is not about winning a race. When competition enters the equation, certain regulation becomes essential. It becomes a matter of fairness, but more than that, a matter of safety. Athletes immersed in intense competition are seldom the best judges of their personal safety. (As the concussion epidemic in sports like football and hockey so grimly illustrate...)

One year ago it didn't seem possible. That a swimmer, one of our own, could die in the midst of a race. As we quickly learned, it was a death that was preventable. This wasn't a freak heart attack, a there-by-the-grace-of-God sickness so inexplicable we couldn't hope to understand. The causes of Fran Crippen's death were understandable. Too much so, uncomfortably so. He was involved in a race of extreme negligence and dangerous conditions. In the end, the water was too hot. It should never be again.

The Storyteller and the Torturer

Lessons in Motivation... Orlando, FL   The view from room 761 of the Disney Swan Hotel is disorienting. Adrift neck deep in the land of make-believe, this is what I see: A green-canopied expanse of Florida palms and citrus trees, eleven hotels dot the horizon, a water tower with Mickey Mouse ears off in the distance, a faux New Orleans complex of time shares on the banks of a new canal, the parking lot below circling with Disney buses, depositing stroller-pushers into the hands of the Disney army, whose customer service is dispensed with relentless good cheer. A long way from home...

We're here for the annual United States Swim School Association conference. I spent a good deal of time preparing my German partner, Lars, whose only American homes have been in Berkeley, CA and the East Village of New York City, for one of his first real tastes of soul-free Americana. As we approached the hotel entrance yesterday afternoon, he admired the "frozen yogurt architecture." I asked him what he meant. He pulled an imaginary frozen yogurt dispenser, over and over, each imagined swirl exactly like the last. I got it.

The first presentation of the conference, which we'd just missed, was from the keynote speaker, a Disney executive talking about "Building a Business Through Storytelling", something I wholeheartedly embrace. I was sorry to miss it, and the reviews we heard from fellow swim school owners were all glowing. It's long been Disney mantra, the power of the story to sell anything at all. Our environment was proof. A sweltering central Florida wasteland transformed into a money-gushing machine of make believe, built of the backs of Mickey and Goofy, Snow White and the rest. I've never much liked these stories; truth be told, I've frequently found Disney's essential existence offensive. The story as sales pitch. Without apology, inauthentic and phony being the actual point.

Fortunately, I remained absorbed in the Book - the Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach. The same one I plugged last week, for those of you following along... Not that Harbach needs the plug for the swimming audience; his novel currently sits comfortably on the New York Times best-seller list at #9. But this Book is becoming something of an obsession with me with each passing page. It could be viewed as the anti-Disney tale. Something that asks questions so hard and deep that it couldn't possibly be distilled into a theme park ride or blockbuster film. (Though it wouldn't surprise me if one of Disney's many tentacles has already purchased the movie rights...) As our flight descended over Orlando International, I read a (another) page that stopped me cold, a paragraph that might just distill the very essence of coaching. And as providence would have it, yes, it was all about storytelling...

Coaches, please read carefully:

"All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph... People loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn't do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer."

In the fourteen nomadic years that my life was consumed by butterfly, I was lucky enough to swim for a wide collection of world-class coaches. While my career started at the same spot as Michael Phelps, North Baltimore, mine was not a path of one coach-swimmer relationship, forming the ultimate age-group to Olympics bond. It was dotted with stops -- from NBAC to Badger to Bolles to USC to Pacific Dolphins to SMU... Each stop run by men who knew how to tell these stories. At their best, all made your story epic, and each at his worst was no more than mere torturer.

As Harbach notes, the key is in choosing the form of suffering. Because when suffering makes sense, we truly do love it. If we didn't, no sport would exist. For that matter, nor would any successful business. Sacrifice hurts, it's often a pain in the ass. It's never, ever, fun to wake up before dawn, but as the Chinese proverb goes: No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.

The men and women who've built this often horrifying edifice of Disney understand this. Walking a faux Atlantic City "Boardwalk" with an ESPN Zone at one end and fake carnival barkers along the edge of a fake body of water, these things might make me suffer without sense, but for many millions, the escape makes all the sense in the world. The story they wish to hear does not include doom or flaws or obstacles, but the complete imagined absence of such things in the world. That's a powerful sales pitch, and the stories of talking mice and dwarves do the job.

But where sport is concerned, especially swimming, the story must have darkness. It needs pain and sacrifice to make sense, to make it worth it. The balance is never easy, and I realize there's a whole lot more to coaching than weaving inspiring, personal tales for each athlete. Like, say, the actual scientific and artistic knowledge of the sport itself... But ultimately, like everything else, it's a sales pitch. How do you make your swimmers buy into being the best they can be? By selling them a story.

The Spell of Perfection

Extreme Expectations and the End of the World Standing behind the blocks, the winner was already obvious. Eight 10-year-old boys stood twitching and nervous behind their lanes, waiting to be summoned to the start and released into the water, racing one lap of butterfly down this 50-meter pool at a college in the Bronx. The one in the middle did not belong among the others. If not yet a man among boys, then certainly a thoroughbred among ponies. A head taller, shoulders broader, an impassive mask of focus locked down his lane... A Swimmer, capital S required.

Four seconds and two strokes into the race, he'd opened a body length on his nearest "competitor." The lead continued to widen, astonishingly so, until about 32 seconds later, when his two hands plowed into the far wall and stopped the clock. Five slow seconds after that, the second place finisher arrived one lane over. Among timers and coaches and officials and parents, there was considerable buzz for this young flying phenom as he climbed from the pool. Then a strange thing happened:

This 10-year-old newly minted Junior Olympic Champion burst into tears. Goggles were thrown. Pats on the back brushed off and unacknowledged. The walk back to his coaches was spent weeping unashamed and devastated. He'd swum his lifetime best, but missed a 20-year record by a tenth, and that was all that mattered. Winning meant absolutely nothing to him. He failed to reach his goal, one that would have required a perfect race. And in this particular breed of athlete, short of perfection meant total inconsolable meltdown. It was the end of the world, and in this state of irrational mania, he did not want to hear otherwise. This wasn't the first time.

Because this swimmer was one of our own, the star of our young New York City club team, this reaction provoked a curious mix of confusion and dismay among his teammates and coaches. Where there should have been high fives, there were shrugs and averted eyes. Coaches from other teams looked our way with bemused sympathy. Parents in the stands looked for the boy's mom and dad, assuming parental pressure must be the root. Unfortunately, as a former confirmed goggle-thrower who threw tearful tantrums well past the age of embarrassment, I recognized this behavior too well. We were one of the same tribe. That's written without pride, and an awful lot of half-suppressed shame.

Why do some athletes succumb to this spell of perfection? This need, and it is a need, to reach their sky-high goals with absolute perfect performance... How do they get so worked up, so obsessive about reaching these extreme expectations, that anything less is utter devastation? Why does it matter so MUCH?

It's not healthy, we know this. We know even in the midst of meltdown. But no, we don't want to hear it. We believe, and in part we are right, that this consuming passion for excellence is what makes us successful, what separates us from the ho-hum cheerful jokers in the next lanes who can actually get happy with a mere best time. Problem is, that ho-hum joker sometimes becomes the what-me-worry Ryan Lochte standing on top of Olympic podiums, long after the fire-breathing head case has burned out and faded away.

In my case, my 11-year-old self ended up on a shrink's couch, trying to explain to a kindly bearded child psychologist why things like state records and top sixteen times felt like a matter of life and death. He didn't give me many answers, but he did give me a small wax figurine of a mouse, about three inches tall. He told me to keep it in my bag at competitions, and when I felt the rage coming on after a race that went less than perfect (all of them), I should take it out and pour out my feelings to the mouse in private. You know, rather than publicly weep on deck while throwing my goggles and stomping away from coaches. So, instead I became the nut bar who mumbled furiously to a wax mouse in the locker room. It helped a little. I also crushed that mouse into a wax ball the size of a golf ball.

Gradually, you learn to hide this madness. You're still cast under its spell; you still need that perfect race, that far off goal time. But when it doesn't happen, you learn to channel the crushing disappointment, or at least you learn to take an extra long warm down until you get a hold of yourself. But deep down, you know you're right, that the world really is coming to an end.

In a terrific new novel called The Art of Fielding, author Chad Harbach shows us just how the universe splinters when perfection cracks. It's the story of a college baseball prodigy, a shortstop named Henry Skrimshander, with a glove poetically, and perfectly, christened Zero. As in the number of errors Henry's ever made in his life... When he makes his first, with a disastrous throw to first, the demons descend and the fates of those around him veer darkly in new directions. The truth might be stranger than fiction, but the best fiction is a whole lot more true than any reality.

Thinking of Henry and his glove Zero, envying Harbach's close to perfect novel, and hoping I can figure out some way to guide our driven young butterfly prodigy, you start to realize how absurd this doomed quest is. You start to take pathetic cliches like 'nobody's perfect' to heart. You hope not just for brilliant flawless all-your-dreams-come-true success, but for something like satisfaction...

And so, from his tearful triumph at Junior Olympics, our young flyer traveled a few weeks later to Eastern Zones, still deeply under the spell of perfection, for his last meet as a 10-year-old. His last chance to break that elusive record. I texted back and forth with his mom, praying he'd succeed, but praying just as much that he'd come out of the meet without cracking up in a fit of flawed despair. On the third day of the meet, he took his marks in the 50 fly... where he proceeded to demolish that record by a second and a half, posting the fastest time in America. His 50 fly was faster than Michael Phelps when he was 10. It was perfect.

Screw satisfaction. Perfection was possible after all, and long live its spell.

Blood, Honor, and Shame

Stamping Your Blood Passport on the Olympic Journey One fine morning, maybe tomorrow, a stranger will show up at your door and put a needle in your arm. You will not resist. You have no choice. This stranger, who has arrived without warning, will open a bag with a syringe, a few vials, and an assortment of official documents which you will sign with great seriousness. You will roll up your sleeve as he sits across from you. He will lean forward and tell you that you'll feel a slight pinch. You will wince and look away as the needle breaks your skin. After the vials have been filled with a sufficient amount of your blood, the stranger will pack his bags and leave. You will probably never see him again.

If you're currently ranked in the top 25 in the world in any event, this is your reality. You've probably never given it a second thought. If it helps keep our sport clean, we must support it, right? Like criticizing military troops or raising taxes, this appears to be one of those subjects where dissent is not an option. If you have a problem with blood testing, you must have something to hide. Never mind the dark privacy-stealing invasiveness of the act itself. If you carry that Olympic dream, what's in your body is not your own. It is up for display and dissection, an open-book passport produced by needle-wielding strangers...

Last summer in Shanghai, the FINA Bureau approved a pilot program for the long-considered 'Biological Passport'. The World Anti-Doping Agency subsequently signed off on these passports, meaning that in the lead-up to London more athletes than ever before will be subjected to blood testing, both in and out of competition. In a statement, FINA called the Athletes Biological Passport "the most advanced tool in the fight against doping in Sport." The new legislation calls for a steep increase in blood testing, requiring that 10% of all samples taken from athletes are blood instead of urine.

Why is blood better than piss? For the simple reason that it can detect some of the favored forms of cheating that don't show up in urine, ie Human Growth Hormone, EPO, and blood doping... Not that we have any reason to suspect any recent Olympic medalists of abusing such things... So, this should be a good thing, right? More opportunity to catch the guilty, the more chance we have to witness clean, untainted achievement at next summer's Games. In theory it sounds like a long overdue upgrade in the ever-losing battle against doping. So then why does the reality of blood testing feel like we're entering a Stasi-esque sports state of freedomless submission for the world's greatest athletes?

Is this where Olympic sport has arrived? Not only is the answer a clear and obvious 'yes', the total lack of questioning from any athletes or coaches indicates that we're so far gone, so conditioned to a culture of sporting suspicion that we are literally willing do to anything to prove our innocence. Actually, innocence is the wrong word: we're willing to do anything to prove we belong at the Olympics. Standards of innocence are not only constantly changing, so too is the very definition of the word from country to country.

Regardless of where you come from, there's no worse fear for an athlete than testing positive. Especially when innocent. We know these tests are subject to interpretation - hence the lengthy battles that inevitably ensue when an apparent 'false positive' comes back. Will blood provide conclusive evidence of exactly what's going on in a body? Will it prevent situations like the tragic case of Jessica Hardy three years ago, when an athlete's Olympic dream was revoked thanks to a positive test that wasn't quite Positive? Or will a questionable change in blood levels on your new passport lead to further debate, further excuses to explain away dubious bodily impurities?

Perhaps it's time to take the mission for clean sport in an entirely new direction. Rather than a standard built on blood and piss, why not something even more personal -- like honor and shame.

When I was in 4th grade, I was introduced to something called the Honor Code. On every test or quiz, we were required to write the following pledge on the back: "On my honor, I pledge that I have neither given nor received aid on this paper." It was drilled into us as a sacred promise. Breaking it would be the highest, most horrible sin of all. Physical violence against a classmate at recess was more socially acceptable than glancing at his paper during a test. Ok, we all lose our temper sometimes, but to lose your honor? It was unthinkable. There was no greater shame than being a cheater.

Clearly, 4th Graders are slightly more impressionable than elite world class athletes. Or maybe they just have more honor.

Before you scoff at this notion of an 'Honor Code' being more powerful, more of a deterrent than a needle in an arm or urine in a cup, consider the standard of our courts of law. Does every witness submit to a lie detector test before taking the stand? No, instead they sit down, put their hand on the Bible, raise the other hand and recite that they 'promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.'

It's this court-bound honor code that seals the fate of criminals - or acquits the falsely accused. The promise to tell the truth is enough to convict murderers. But in sport we apparently need much more. We need proof in the form of bodily fluids.

Of course, the procession of iconic athletes - from Barry Bonds to Roger Clemens to Lance Armstrong - who have brazenly lied under oath proves that raising a hand and taking a sacred vow of truth is not exactly taken seriously by all. The Pulitzer-prize winning journalist James B. Stewart even wrote a book on this erosion of truth-telling on the stand. His book Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America makes the case that we've become "a society where perjury is the norm." And he goes on to lay out the cases of some of our most high-profile promise breakers, from Bonds to Bernie Madoff to Martha Stewart.

Still, as someone who's taken big blind gulps of the Olympic Kool Aid, who believes that the Olympic standard is something that transcends sport, and someone who competed with no more than Advil and an asthma inhaler in his system, the idea of blood testing is troubling. Instead, moments before every Olympic final, before marching from the Ready Room, why not line up every athlete and force them to place a hand on a Bible and swear that: "On my honor, I pledge that I am a clean athlete who has never taken anything illegal that may enhance my performance."

Call it the Competitor's Code, and like the trials of Bonds, Clemens, Armstrong, et all, chase down those suspected of breaking this pledge, and publicly shame them as the criminals of sport that they are.

If you can dive in and compete with a clean conscience after making that promise, then may the best swimmer win. But we know such utopian notions of honor and pure competition won't be happening anytime soon. Instead, we need needle-wielding strangers to knock on your door tomorrow morning...

The Phelps Effect

Is the cupboard bare for Team USA? Beneath the superstar surface, all was not well at the World Championships in Shanghai. While Phelpte, the two-headed headline monster, was not so quietly collecting twelve medals between them, there was a curious void among the rest of the American men. Yes, Ryan Lochte was the new king, we read all about it. And yes, Michael Phelps was back, re-motivated and back to his astonishing self. But where were the rest of them? Not on the podium. Not in the breaststrokes, nor the sprint frees, nor the distance events, not even in the 100 back - for decades (yes, literally decades) the single most dominant event in American men's swimming. Where was that devastating depth, for so long the hallmark of Team USA?

Aside from Tyler Clary, who collected a silver and a bronze behind Mr. Lochte in the 400 IM and 200 back, and Tyler McGill, who claimed bronze in the 100 fly behind Mr. Phelps, no other American men appeared on the World Championships podium in an individual event. Perhaps most tellingly, the men struggled mightily to win the race that has always been a foregone conclusion - the 4 x 100 medley relay. With pedestrian mid-pack splits on the front half, it was up to Mr. Phelps to deliver a crushing fly split that supplied Nathan Adrian with enough of a lead to hold off the charging Aussie James Magnussen on the end. The two-tenth victory was their slimmest margin for gold ever in a major competition; it was also almost five full seconds slower than the world record (albeit a tainted suit-assisted record from '09...). It's dangerous to read too much into one meet, but it's also hard to ignore a wider trend here.

Call it the Phelps Effect. Wherein the talent and ambition of fellow countrymen is drained and daunted in the face of insurmountable dominance... Well, insurmountable for all but one, it seems. Ryan Lochte hasn't been daunted, and now, as this is typed, he has surpassed Phelps as the consensus top swimmer on earth. Not by much, to be sure. But there is no one else even remotely in the running. Which would seem to make Lochte the exception that proves an uncomfortable rule...

In a terrific Sports Illustrated profile on Lochte in the lead-up to Shanghai, Bob Bowman gave credence to this Phelps Effect. "Michael has destroyed a lot of people psychologically," said Bowman. "There are a number of swimmers who came up against Michael, found it impossible to beat him and just gave up. But Ryan was never fazed."

No one on the planet has witnessed that as up close as the Great One's own coach. While Bowman is hardly objective in his assessment, he's not wrong. And he's not the only one to voice it. One of Phelps' former training partners at the University of Michigan has personally told me as much. "He just broke spirits," said this swimmer. "He certainly did it to me." This from a former National Team member and multiple time All-American at Michigan. He went on to tell me about glancing underwater off of turns in workouts and watching Phelps' utterly depressing superiority. "He's just so much better, so much more efficient, it makes you question what you're doing."

While talent can't be faked or willed into being, it's confidence that has always separated the very good from the great. Unshakeable, blind, smiling, eternal confidence. The sort embodied by Ryan Lochte. Of his many admirable traits, it's that unshakeable self-confidence that allowed Lochte to surpass, for now, his mighty rival. And it was certainly given a good hard shake - to the tune of a couple dozen head-to-head defeats in major competitions.

A few years back, on the bottom of the world, another theory of talent drain was floated by a swim-obsessed Aussie media. Back then it was the Thorpe Effect, as the Australians wondered aloud whether or not Ian Thorpe's prodigious achievements had scared away the next generation in his wake. Predictably, there were howls of protests from the coaching quarters. That's ridiculous, they insisted. Not my swimmers, they snorted. If anything wouldn't Thorpe have inspired and motivated, rather than discouraged? Well, yes and no. No one was denying that, long term, Thorpe raised the standard of excellence for his Aussie torchbearers, challenging those who came next to dream that much bigger. But what of his contemporaries, swimmers the same age or just a bit younger? Among this group, there appears to be evidence that the Thorpe Effect was all too real. That is, until it was cured this year.

In the years between Ian Thorpe's retirement and recent comeback, the Aussie men seemed to regress. Indeed, in 2010, there was not a single Australian man ranked in the top six in the world in any freestyle event. It was as if Thorpe, along with compatriot Grant Hackett, had snuffed out the will of their immediate heirs apparent. A few years had to pass before it was ok for Aussie freestylers to ascend the podium again. In 2011 at the Worlds, they shook off the Effect with some statement-making swims. Led by 20-year-old James Magnussen and his 4x100 free relay teammates, the Aussie mates rediscovered their mojo. We all knew it was temporary, but that doesn't mean the Thorpe Effect didn't exist.

At least for the men. It must be noted that this strange will-sucking ailment does not appear to cross gender lines. It appears to have an inverse effect among the women. As the Aussie men struggled over the last five years or so, the Australian women surged. Just as a growing crop of American women, led by the incredible Missy Franklin, appear to be shaping up as Team USA's deepest women's squad in over a decade.

Deny it all you like, coaches, but the same thing is now happening stateside. Consider Team USA without the Phelpte monster for a moment. Who would be the face of the franchise? Before your next-best knee-jerk reply, let's acknowledge that a face of the USA Swimming franchise should probably be a world record holder who is expected to win gold, as the clear dominating favorite... Meaning certain would-be champions in waiting still have some (im)proving to do. Sure there are insane talents on the rise, who will surely be an international presence soon enough. (Yes, watch out for David Nolan, Ryan Murphy, et all...) But those phenoms still have a few years to ripen. Until then, get ready for symptoms of the Phelps Effect to worsen before they get better.

Unless of course Ryan Lochte would care to share the vaccine.