Michael Phelps captured the 200-meter butterfly Wednesday night in 1:52.76, and also finished first in the 200-meter freestyle.
INDIANAPOLIS — The United States Swimming National Championships are serving as a stark reminder that while seasons change, fads fade and fresh faces turn tired, there remains one constant: Michael Phelps.
Phelps raced in two events Wednesday night that were part of his 2004 and 2008 Olympic programs — the 200-meter freestyle and 200-meter butterfly — and won both. In the 200 freestyle, Phelps led from the start against a field that included three other Beijing Olympians. His time of 1 minute 44.23 seconds was well off his world record of 1:42.96.
An hour later, Phelps held off Tyler Clary in the 200 butterfly, an event in which he has held the world record since 2001. He was timed in 1:52.76, missing his world mark by 73-hundredths of a second.
In between Phelps’s swims, Aaron Peirsol regained the 100-meter backstroke world record he had held from 2004 until last week, when the Spaniard Aschwin Wildeboer claimed it with a clocking of 52.38. Peirsol, the two-time defending Olympic champion, took it back with a 51.94.
Peirsol, a three-time Olympian, and the 24-year-old Phelps were the old reliables on a night on which a few of their Beijing teammates failed in their bids to qualify for the FINA World Championships in Rome later this month.
Margaret Hoelzer placed third and Elizabeth Beisel was fourth in the 100-meter backstroke and Caroline Burckle finished outside the top 16 in the 200 freestyle. The biggest surprise was Katie Hoff, the American-record holder in the 200 freestyle, who finished eighth in the event.
Phelps’s consistency — indeed, the constancy of his excellence — should not be taken for granted in a year in which he took several months off, gained 20 pounds and endured the public humiliation of being photographed with a marijuana pipe in his hands at a party.
To appreciate how hard it is to stay at the top, one need only look at Hoff, Phelps’s North Baltimore Aquatic Club teammate. She left for Beijing last year with a chance to win six gold medals and returned with a silver and two bronzes.
For most athletes, that would have qualified as a success. For Hoff, who has lived with “the female Phelps” label for six years, it had the whiff of failure.
She changed coaches — but not teams — last fall, leaving Paul Yetter to work with Bob Bowman, who has been the caretaker of Phelps’s career for the past 13 years. Hoff, 20, has struggled to adapt to Bowman’s militaristic style, and changes he made to her freestyle stroke heightened her discomfort.
“Bob and I talked about this being a low-key year,” Hoff said, “but it’s actually been the hardest year of my life.”
A sympathetic Phelps said, “She’s going through a little bump in the road, but I think she’s going to get through it.”
In Hoff’s first event, the 400-meter freestyle on Tuesday, she swam 10 seconds slower than her American record and finished sixth. With the top six finishers earning berths to Rome for relay purposes, the 200 freestyle figured to be her ticket to Italy. But she never posed a challenge to the top two finishers, Dana Vollmer and Allison Schmitt.
After qualifying sixth in the morning, Hoff conducted an interview that sounded like a concession speech. Asked what her expectations were for the final, she said: “Realistically? Dana and Allison and those girls are going to be real tough. I’m just going to do the best I can.”
In 2005, fresh off her first Olympic experience, a teenage Hoff turned professional and signed a 10-year, seven-figure contract with the apparel company Speedo. It seemed all good at the time.
Contractual obligations have precluded Hoff from seeking refuge from the storm clouds that have rolled in this year. One of her fellow Olympians, Natalie Coughlin, is taking this year off, but Hoff said she did not have that luxury.
“It would have been nice,” she said. “The thing is, Natalie’s contract with Speedo is done. She could do that. I didn’t have that ...” Her voice trailed off.
There is a line of aspirants for the ingénue role vacated by Hoff. Leading the way is Elizabeth Pelton, a 15-year-old who is coached by Yetter at North Baltimore Aquatic Club. She was second in the 100-meter backstroke Wednesday behind Hayley McGregory and was second in the 200 individual medley on Tuesday.
Dagny Knutson, 17, a teammate of Pelton on the United States team that competed in the junior Pan Pacific Championships in January, placed fifth in the 200 freestyle, which should qualify her for the World Championship team as a relay alternate.
Nothing is a permanent fit. Certainly not the high-tech suits the swimmers are wearing here as they forsake yesterday’s cutting-edge models for brands that did not exist last year.
Only Phelps seems to stay in one place — first.
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