Performance Sounds Like Another Broken Record

No less an authority than Russia's Alexander Popov, a four-time Olympic gold medalist who won the 100 freestyle here Thursday, was lending credibility to the sentiment that Phelps is going to be one of the all-time greats.

"He's not going to be, he already is," Popov said. "Every race in the 200 butterfly, he's set the record in the semifinals. Pretty much every race he swims, he sets a new benchmark for everybody. There's not a lot of swimmers who can do that."

The semifinals in the world swimming championships at Palau Sant Jordi were supposed to be the first half of Phelps versus Ian Thorpe with the second half coming in today's final. They went head-to-head for the first time in the semifinal -- had the same reaction time off the blocks -- but the Australian star placed fourth in the heat in 2:00.42.

For Thorpe, the good news is that he managed to squeeze into today's final, qualifying with the fifth-fastest time. And, for Thorpe, the bad news is that Phelps felt off.

"I wasn't feeling as good as I would like to in the water, but hopefully tomorrow we can do a little better," said Phelps, who bettered his world record of 1:57.94 set less than a month ago. "My body didn't feel right. I didn't really sleep today, this afternoon. Hopefully some sleeping, eating and some more resting, and we can get through tomorrow.

"Swam the race that I wanted to. I wanted to go out there and break the world record. That was the goal and that's probably going to be the goal for tomorrow too."

One thought was that Thorpe was holding something back for today, and, in fairness, he was coming off a final in the 100 freestyle, in which he finished third behind Popov and Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands, less than a half an hour before the IM.

Even Phelps' coach, Bob Bowman, thought the double Thorpe tried to pull off was "impossible."

This was Phelps' second world record in the last three days. The presence of Thorpe, obviously, has elevated the IM and raised the stakes.