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Nemesis looms for Phelps

Internet, undated
On a clear day in Beijing, you can see, well, about five blocks.
But a series of thunderstorms and another blazing race rinsed the skies
enough for Michael Phelps to make out the looming image of Ian Crocker. Phelps won the 200-meter individual medley in 1:54.23 for his sixth gold medal and sixth world record in as many tries, which means he goes for No. 7 in the 100 butterfly, which means he has to face his quiet, unassuming, 25-year-old nemesis from Portland, Maine.
Phelps knows Crocker well. For years, he woke up with Crocker staring down at him.
After Crocker beat him at the 2003 World Championships, Phelps stuck the Swimming World magazine cover memorialising the achievement on his bedroom wall,
as a reminder of what it feels like to lose, as motivation.
Phelps beat Crocker at the 2004 Olympics.
Crocker won at the 2005Worlds.
Phelps won at the 2007Worlds.
The margins of Phelps' two victories: .04 and .05 seconds.
"Sports is all about one person trying to derail the other person's dreams," Crocker said. “It's kind of the dog-eat-dog part of sports Michael has his goals and I have mine. I’m not going to feel bad if 7 race my heart out and end up winning."
Phelps' toughest competition in the 200 IM figured to be Florida's Ryan Lochte. But he got a break from the scheduling gods when the 200 backstroke final was 29 minutes earlier, and Lochte decided to race both.
Lochte won the 200 back and got the individual gold medal he so coveted, derailing the dream of fellow American Aaron Peirsol to sweep the backstroke golds in consecutive Olympics. But Lochte didn't have his usual oomph in the
200 IM, and Phelps beat Hungary's Laszlo Cseh by more than two seconds. Lochte was third.
Phelps' eighth event is the medley relay, and it would take one of the biggest upsets in swimming history for the U.S. men to lose.
That leaves the 100 fly and Crocker.
And, suddenly, some guy named Milorad Cavic.
‘One day,” Cavic said, “if they talk about how Michael Phelps won seven gold medals and lost a chance to win eight, they'll talk about who that guy is who took it away from him. I' d love to be that guy.”
The 6-foot-6 Cavic was born in Anaheim, went to Tustin High, swam for Cal and has a brother, Danny, who played basketball at the University of San Francisco. Here he represents Serbia, his parents' homeland, because it offered a path of least resistance to the Olympics. Each country gets two individual spots in an Olympic swim event, and the United States had PhelDS and Crocker. “There's no way I'm going to bad-mouth the U.S.,” said Cavic, whose father moved from Serbia in 1982, two years before he was born. "Everything 1 have is because of the U.S. We got away from the war. I didn't have to sleep in a bunker."
Cavic broke the Olympic record by going 50.76 seconds in the 100 butterfly prelims, and had the best time again in the semifinals 50.92 seconds to Phelps' 50.97 and Crocker's 51.27.
In Athens, he was leading his semifinal heat after 50 meters, only for his suit to rip open at the neck and’“suck in a couple pounds of water." At (he 2007 World Championships, he was sixth.
Cavic was asked if Phelps should fear him.
"He's definitely not afraid,” Qavic said. "This is another walk in the park for him. Am I afraid of Itim? I'm just nervous of what he hasn't done I'm going to swim my best time, and if beats that then hedeserves towin."