Michael Phelps

After four editions of the swim Trials: a love letter to Omaha

After four editions of the swim Trials: a love letter to Omaha

OMAHA, Neb. — It was 106 degrees here Thursday. Not the kind of day that makes you long for Omaha.

But I’m gonna miss it here.

Rumor is, and only rumor, that this may well be the final time the U.S. swim Trials are held in Omaha. They’ve been here four times in a row: 2008, 2012, 2016 and now 2021. Indianapolis wants 2024 and, to be honest, it kind of feels like a change of pace might well be in order, that the big field house that is Lucas Oil Stadium might well be next.

If that is the case, Omaha has had a great run -- inside the basketball arena, now called CHI Health Center, just up the street from the baseball field, TDAmeritrade Park, home of the NCAA men’s College World Series, which this year gets underway Saturday.

The truth about the Trials: destinies are written in hundredths of a second

The truth about the Trials: destinies are written in hundredths of a second

OMAHA, Neb. — Every four (or perchance, five) years, the U.S. Trials, swim and track, make plain one of the inexorable truths of our lives. Time is what we make of it. Destinies are written in hundredths of a second.

At the Trials, there is no getting around this truth.

There is only the making of an easy peace. An understanding that, for a glimmer, one can stretch the boundaries of what might be possible.

This is what Katie Ledecky is — has been since 2012 — doing, and what she affirmed Wednesday in winning both the 200 freestyle and, about an hour later, the 1500 free. Earlier this meet, she won the 400 free. The 800 free awaits.

This, too, is what 31-year-old Allison Schmitt, the 200 free gold medalist in London in 2012, achieved Wednesday night. In a feel-good comeback, she finished just back of Ledecky in the 200 free, earning a fourth trip to the Olympics. If she wins a medal in Tokyo, most likely in the relays, she would join Dara Torres (five) and Jenny Thompson (four) in an exclusive club: medals at four-plus Games. Schmitt already has medals from 2016, 2012 and 2008.

With the MP Show over, now what? Where are the U.S. men?

With the MP Show over, now what? Where are the U.S. men?

OMAHA, Neb. — Here in Omaha, for the fourth time in a row, the U.S. Olympic Trials for swimming are on. This was always a big stage for Michael Phelps, and no more so than in 2008, when he qualified for five individual events and put himself in place to swim on three relays — setting the stage for the unmatched performance he would put on later that summer in Beijing, going a perfect eight-for-eight.

The Phelps Show that summer proved must-see TV on NBC. Some significant cohort of 5- to 8-year-old boys tuned in. Those boys are now 18 to 21, prime time for swimmers.

Where are they?

Girls across America back then clearly saw Michael on TV and said, let’s be like Mike. The U.S. women’s team heading for Tokyo is likely to be strong if not dominant.

The men? Did they get drawn to football? Or — since competitive swimmers tend to be tall — basketball? Or volleyball? Or what? Where are the dudes?

To the emotional rescue of a twilight zone swim championships

To the emotional rescue of a twilight zone swim championships

GWANGJU, South Korea — If ever there was an event that suffered from an Olympic hangover, these 18th FINA world aquatics championships would be right up there on the list of leading candidates. Indeed, a longtime FINA official said, these were the championsihps from the twilight zone.

Some 18 months after the hugely successful — and bitterly cold — PyeongChang Olympics over in South Korea’s northeastern mountains, the action shifted to this nation’s southwest, and Gwangju, into the heat and humidity and, as it turned out, virtually non-stop rain. Strike that. These championships went down to the percussive beat of seemingly endless thunderstorms. There was lightning, too, as immediately before the women’s water polo final, won by the United States over Spain.

They tried to sell this event as a peacemaker: “Dive into Peace,” read the white-on-turquoise slogans plastered all over the venues and, indeed, around town, a nod not just to events on the peninsula but, as virtually everyone in South Korea knows, the events of May 1980, when a democracy uprising climaxed in a bloody battle between the military and locals, the victims now honored in an expansive national cemetery near town.

Instead of peace, however, a balcony in a packed nightclub near the athletes village collapsed early on the morning of July 27, killing two Koreans and injuring at least nine athletes, including four American water polo players.

Meanwhile, inside the venues, athletes from Australia and Britain staged medals-stand protests, purportedly over doping matters tied to the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang. Attendance proved spotty at best; it would be charitable to say there were even hundreds of people on some days at the diving events that opened the meet’s 17-day run. Even the internet — and South Korea is known for its robust internet — didn’t work, and why?

It was thus left to Katie Ledecky, on the meet’s next-to-last night, to provide the emotional rescue — the stuff, the inspiration — that, truly, makes Olympic sport different from everything else. 

Essentially, Ledecky all but saved these championships.

Reimagining Olympic legacy

Reimagining Olympic legacy

Time flies. It was September 2017 when the International Olympic Committee made the dual award of the 2024 Games to Paris and the 2028 Games to Los Angeles.

In essence — nearly 11 years ’til the Olympics came back to LA, in July 2028.

Last week, it was exactly 2024 days until the start of the 2024 Games in Paris. A typical Olympic countdown clock ticks down from roughly seven years. The year marker for Paris is already at five.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, 11 years has turned to nine-plus. Of course nine-plus is a long time. But look how many months have already passed so quickly.

Unlike every other Games in modern Olympic history — the LA 84 Games the exception and thus the model, turning a $232.5 million surplus — LA28 offers a chance to do it differently, differently in this case meaning better, because in LA everything is built, meaning the LA 28 organizing committee has the extraordinary opportunity from the get-to to focus on what the Games ought to stand for and be about.

LA28 does not have to wait until after a Games for new buildings built as part of an Olympic-related infrastructure boom to secure a legacy.

Instead, it can and should use the Olympics — because there is no construction need — to redefine, indeed reimagine, legacy.

No one, ever again, should have to go through this

No one, ever again, should have to go through this

When our youngest daughter was just 18 months old, we were at a friend’s house here in Los Angeles. In the back was an unfenced pool. In a flash, she had toddled out to the pool and jumped in. Alertly, my wife ran across the house and jumped in — fully clothed — after her.

Another story. When I worked at the LA Times, we were at a party down in Orange County with some newspaper friends. We were all much younger parents then, and there were all kinds of little children around. I happened to be on duty at the hot tub when one of the kids, who was just 2, just that fast, sank to the bottom. I fished her out. 

Our daughter went on to do years and years at the LA County junior lifeguard program and a couple days ago finished her freshman year at Northwestern. That 2-year-old just graduated from Michigan.

These stories have happy endings. 

Way, way, way too many don’t.  

Please: let’s come together in the aftermath of the sorrowful drowning death of 19-month-old Emeline Miller, daughter of Olympic ski star Bode and his wife, Morgan, the professional volleyball player.

Let Emmy’s death be a call to action.

Alfred E. Neuman as swim spokesdude: What, Team USA worry?

Alfred E. Neuman as swim spokesdude: What, Team USA worry?

BUDAPEST — In the land before time, when there were no cellphones, those of us of a certain generation were sent out of the house by exasperated mothers who didn’t know the first thing about bicycle helmets and, truth be told, didn’t much care. They just wanted us out until it was dark.

So off we went, baseball cards in our spokes. It was a very exciting day when the new edition of certain magazines would show up in the racks at the Ben Franklin five-and-dime store. It was super-exciting when Mad magazine would show up, with stupid Alfred E. Neuman on the cover, grinning, “What, me worry?”

Now that these 2017 FINA world championships are in the history books, can we finally acknowledge Alfred E. Neuman as Team USA’s unofficial spokesdude?

No Michael Phelps, no Ryan Lochte, no Missy Franklin. No worries.

Phelps and the shark or, like, a great swim meet?

Phelps and the shark or, like, a great swim meet?

BUDAPEST — Did you know, my 18-year-old daughter said to me over FaceTime, she in California, me here in Budapest at the FINA world swim championships, that Michael Phelps raced a shark?

Did you also know, she went on, that it wasn’t really a real shark? And Michael had a monofin? And Michael went 38.1 seconds and the shark 36.1 seconds? He was close!

So, I said to the darling daughter, now that you have told me everything about Michael and, as it were, the ultimate example of jumping the shark, what can you tell me about what’s going on here? Because, I said, this is a great meet.

To switch animal gears, or something, here was her response: crickets.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the existential dilemma of Olympic sport in 2017.

Katie Ledecky is (gasp) not perfect and -- it's (more than) OK

Katie Ledecky is (gasp) not perfect and -- it's (more than) OK

BUDAPEST — If you listen closely, very closely, to Katie Ledecky this week at the 2017 FINA world championships, you can hear — appropriately — a college sophomore-to-be.

Someone who sees that there is a big world out there beyond swimming, that swimming is just a piece of a long and meaningful life as part of a loving and supportive family. Who also sees that many of the big stars on the American team who have come before her in recent years have wrestled with some big issues and maybe — probably — could have benefitted from some quality time between Olympic Games.

If you were Katie Ledecky and you had done pretty much everything there is to do at the highest levels, and now, after Wednesday, in the women’s 200-meter freestyle, you were proven human after all, which in its way is the lifting of an incredible burden, might you be inclined to maybe think of 2018, or at least some portion of it after the college swim season, as, well, me time?

As a constructive and positive stroke all around?