Closing Gender Gap in The Pool

Boys Outnumbered, But Phelps May Help

Michael Phelps intends to transform swimming as he returns to the North Baltimore Aquatic Club this fall. He wants to bring more financial opportunities, exposure and professionalism to the sport that has given him 14 Olympic gold medals.

But many U.S. swimming coaches would be satisfied if his superstardom and popularity bring something more basic to pools across the country: boys.

Casual fans who know little about the sport beyond what they saw during the Summer Games in Beijing, when the Adonis-like Phelps and his chiseled U.S. teammates became the undisputed rock stars of the Olympics, might be surprised to learn that American swimming programs have for years struggled to attract male athletes.

Over the last decade, female swimmers have outnumbered males by approximately three to two, although the number of males has ticked upward in recent years, according to USA Swimming, the sport's governing body. People in the sport, who attribute the disparity to a variety of factors including a perception of swimming as more artistic than hard-nosed, are counting on Phelps and the spoils of the sport's prime-time spot in the Olympics to increase interest among young men.

"The problem is a macho thing," said Tom Dolan, a retired three-time Olympic medalist from Arlington. "Kids want to play football and they want to play baseball because those are 'cool' sports. In swimming, you wear a skimpy suit. That's not cool."

Many who have long wondered how the sport could conquer its image issues believe the Olympics set the stage for a potentially monumental breakthrough. NBC's decision to showcase the Olympic swimming events live in prime time, along with Phelps's record-breaking eight gold medals and his post-Olympic tour through the pop-culture media, including an appearance on "Saturday Night Live," added a dose of hipness to a sport whose participants wear bathing caps instead of helmets, goggles instead of eye black and tiny briefs instead of numbered uniforms.

Even that aspect -- the tiny suits -- has changed, and swimming aficionados who rail about the damage high-tech suits have done to the record books can't help but admit that male athletes look much cooler in technically advanced, long-length suits than skimpy Speedo briefs.

Phelps's longtime coach Bob Bowman deplores the idea of young, developing swimmers wearing the speed suits, but he happily encourages boys to wear a modified version -- tight-fitting, thigh-length shorts known as jammers -- simply because they discourage self-consciousness.

Bowman, Dolan and others blame the traditional tiny briefs for nothing short of driving young boys out of the sport.

"I honestly think they were a barrier for getting boys into the sport on the entry level," Bowman said.

"Jammers have really helped boys with self-esteem and body issues," four-time Olympic medal winner Neil Walker said.

U.S. coaches and officials became deeply troubled shortly before the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, when USA Swimming's percentage of male members dropped to an all-time low of 37.5 percent from a high of nearly 45 percent in the mid-1980s, according to Pat Hogan, USA Swimming's club development director.