Phelps good as gold again

Michael Phelps
12 April 2012

Michael Phelps claimed his first gold medal of the World Championships in Shanghai at the third time of asking when he retained his 200 metres butterfly title.

The 14-time Olympic champion returned to the Oriental Sports Centre after being beaten to the 200m freestyle title by American team-mate Ryan Lochte on Tuesday night, while he was also part of the United States' 4x100m relay squad that took bronze earlier in the week.

The 26-year-old now has 23 world titles to his name and the victory was his fifth over the distance.

Phelps led for the first half of the race before Japan's Takeshi Matsuda went ahead on the third length. However, Phelps executed a turn that saw him surface with a clear lead, one that he never relinquished as he finished in one minute 53.34 seconds.

Matsuda was second, 0.67secs adrift, with Wu Peng of China, who had twice recently beaten Phelps in what is his signature event, in third.

Phelps said: "I had written down in my journal all the times I wanted to do at this meet, and so far I'm on pace. Every single one that I've written down, I'm right at it. I wanted to be 1:53 low, and that's what I was. That's a second and a half faster than last year, and I feel like I'm kind of getting back.

"I felt like my old self the last 100m of that race, especially that last 25m. I didn't feel like I was dying and barely able to get my arms out of the water and like there was a piano on my back.

"I actually felt like I was swimming for a whole 200 metres, so it felt good."

The Bob Bowman-coached swimmer won his first world title in the same event 10 years ago, months after becoming the youngest world record holder in history at the age of 15 years and nine months. On the rostrum, Phelps said he thought back to that first title in 2001.

He said: "That's sort of been my bread and butter event, and my family's bread and butter event, and being able to get it back and keep it... I know what I have to do in the next year to be able to be where I want to be. Like I said, I'm heading in the right direction. I'm very pleased."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in