Déjà two all over again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except that Agnel went 46.74.

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

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

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

This would be his first turn on the big stage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stravius, though, went 47.59.

Feigen? 48.23.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most drug-tested: Ryan Lochte

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, for instance:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to track:

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

Then Americans, 222, or 9.4 percent.

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

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

Gay? One to three.

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

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

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

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

The list of Russian names spills onto five.

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

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

BCN 2013: life after Phelps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a perfect world: Mellouli rocks

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

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

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

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

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

The victory closed a circle of sorts.

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

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

Mellouli?

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

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

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

A dumb mistake that any college kid could have made.

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

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

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

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

It was Tunisia's first-ever swimming medal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's right. Eight weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

--

Update:

Mellouli finished third in Monday's 10k.

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

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