The team of Aaron Peirsol, Eric Shanteau, Phelps and David Walters ended eight days of competition in Rome by winning the 400-meter medley relay in 3 minutes, 27.28 seconds, improving the mark set by the U.S. at last year’s Beijing Olympics.
“We wanted to finish on the best note we could,” Phelps was cited as saying on the Web site of swimming governing body FINA. “And that was breaking the record.”
Four more world records were established at the Foro Italico yesterday, taking the tally past 40. Fifteen world bests were set during the 2007 world championships, while 25 records fell in Beijing.
Longstanding marks including middle and long-distance freestyle records set by Australians Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett were among those to fall to athletes in polyurethane suits such as the Arena X-Glide, which swimmers and coaches say enhance performance. The suits will be banned next year.
Three-time Olympic champion Hackett, whose 800-meter freestyle mark was beaten in Rome, said last week that FINA’s decision to allow the polyurethane suits had “undermined and compromised the sport.”
On July 28, FINA ratified an overhaul of swimwear regulations that will outlaw non-textile outfits. Three days ago, the federation said the ban would begin Jan. 1, 2010, after saying earlier last week that any such implementation could be delayed until April or May.
‘Basic Things’
“It’s still about fitness and technique and the basic things so that’s what we’ll work on,” Bob Bowman, the head coach of the U.S. men’s team, told swimnews.com.
The U.S. finished with 22 medals -- 10 gold, six silver and six bronze -- to top the standings in both golds and total medals.
Britain’s Liam Tancock set a world mark of 24.04 in winning yesterday’s men’s 50-meter backstroke, and there were also records for Russia’s Yuliya Efimova in the women’s 50-meter breaststroke and Britta Steffen of Germany in the 50-meter freestyle. Steffen’s victory gave her a sweep of the women’s sprint titles.
American Ryan Lochte won the 400-meter individual medley outside record time. Tunisia’s Oussama Mellouli won the men’s 1,500-meter freestyle in 14:37.28, second to Hackett’s 14:34.56 in the all-time rankings, and Katinka Hosszu of Hungary took the women’s 400-meter individual medley.
24 Medals
Phelps, a record 14-time Olympic champion, used an older Speedo suit for his five-gold haul. He’s now won 24 world championship medals, the most by any swimmer in the event’s 36- year history.
Two days ago, the American took his second individual gold in Rome, the 100-meter butterfly, as he and Serbia’s Milorad Cavic clocked under 50 seconds to smash the old mark. Phelps roared with delight, slapped the water and pulled at the sides of his swimsuit following his win.
‘I don’t think I have ever been that emotional or pumped up after a race,’’ he told reporters. “You saw by my reaction how much I wanted that. I know comments have been made in the past and I welcome them. Comments motivate me and I let my swimming do the talking.”
The 100-meter showdown was a repeat of last year’s Olympic final matchup, when Phelps out-touched the Serb to win by one- hundredth of a second.
Suit Offer
Cavic, who uses an Arena X-Glide, had offered to buy Phelps a new hi-tech swimsuit for the Rome final. The American refused, saying he’d rather give Cavic one of his own.
Phelps also won the 200-meter butterfly, where he lowered his own world mark. He was competing at his first global meet after a three-month ban, imposed after he was pictured in a U.K. newspaper with a bong, a pipe used to smoke marijuana.
His only individual setback at the championships was in the 200-meter freestyle, where he was second to Germany’s Paul Biedermann, who was wearing an Arena X-Glide. It was Phelps’s first solo defeat in a major international event since the 2005 world championships.
“Michael’s kind of back in the game,” Bowman said. “We’re going to go back and work on the 200 free, that’s a big motivator for him if he wants to race this kid.”
The Speedo suit, too, is set to be outlawed. Bowman has said that Phelps might skip international competition until a ban was enforced.
FINA two days ago appointed a five-man commission, comprising four scientists and a swimmer, to oversee the swimwear approval process and monitor swimsuit developments.
The presence of the suits had rendered the Rome championships meaningless as a means of gauging progress between Beijing and London Olympics in 2012, Bowman said.
“The suit issues affect different people differently so you can’t say one country got an advantage and another didn’t,” he said. “That is what’s so insidious about them because you don’t know the effect they’re going to have on anything.”
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