At the U.S. Trials, Already Up to Speed

Phelps and Hoff Open With World Record Times in 400 IM

OMAHA, June 29 -- Just before Michael Phelps's hand touched the wall, both decidedly and barely before that of Ryan Lochte, fireworks staged at the side of the Qwest Center pool here shot off, setting the water aglow. It was, perhaps, a slight error, a pyrotechnic expert with an itchy trigger finger. But it was by no means inappropriate, because Phelps and Lochte opened the U.S. Olympic swimming trials here Sunday night with a riveting race that likely portends accomplishments to come over the next week.

Phelps began his trials -- and his mission to win a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics -- with a world record performance in the 400-meter individual medley. Thus, the Baltimore County native can breathe easy: His spot on the Olympic team is secure. The winner of each individual event here automatically advances to Beijing, with the runners-up all but guaranteed a spot.

"It was probably one of the most painful races of my life," Phelps said on the pool deck afterward.

Painful or not, he smiled, and his duel with Lochte fell in lockstep with what experts predicted in the days leading up to this meet. Phelps's time of 4 minutes 5.25 seconds in the swim that combines 100 meters of four strokes -- butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle -- handily topped his previous world mark of 4:06.22. The indication of what might be to come this week: Lochte, too, beat the previous record -- by 14 hundredths of a second.

So the tally after the meet's first day: three finals that yielded two world records, the other belonging to 19-year-old Katie Hoff, who, like Phelps, grew up training at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club and, like Phelps, set her mark in the 400 IM.

Thus, too, started the legitimate comparisons between the two Marylanders. As Phelps chases all those golds -- he already has six from Athens in 2004 -- Hoff could well be by his side. She is similarly versatile and exceptionally strong, if not as familiar with utter domination.

"Michael's kind of a world record machine, it feels like," Hoff said. "Just to set one is completely amazing to me."

The slowpoke in the three finals: Californian Larsen Jensen, who beat out slightly favored Peter Vanderkaay and Erik Vendt in the 400 freestyle. Jensen, who was fourth in the event in the 2004 Olympics, only set an American record of 3:43.53, better than Vanderkaay's old mark by almost four-tenths of a second.

"This is as tough as the Olympic final," Jensen said, and indeed, Vanderkaay's second-place time was also better than his previous American mark.

Thus, the theme of the evening: speed, and lots of it. American Coach Mark Schubert predicted -- because of new swimsuit technology provided by manufacturer Speedo combined with the physical condition of so many of these elite athletes -- that records could fall in droves. Even breaststroke specialist Brendan Hansen, swimming the semifinals of the 100-meter version of his race, said he was distracted when the pool-side announcer blared that he was on world record pace after 50 meters.

"The only way I was going to get noticed tonight was if I swam a world record," Hansen said. "I'll save that for tomorrow night."

Phelps, though, saved nothing in the first of what could be as many as seven individual events here (he dropped out of the 100 backstroke later in the day). "I definitely left everything in the pool," he said.