MELBOURNE, Australia -- Twelve years old.
That's how young Michael Phelps estimated he was the last time he cut as much as 1.62 seconds off his personal best with one swim. That's what 12-year-old swimmers are supposed to do. They're awkward, lanky and have high-pitched voices, inconsistent technique and little muscle definition.
They're just learning, growing into their bodies, so it's possible to shave big chunks off their personal best in an event like the 200-meter butterfly, where anything approaching 2 minutes, 30 seconds would, at age 12, be considered exceptional.
You're not supposed to do it when breaking a world record, but that's exactly what Phelps did yesterday at the FINA World Championships, touching the wall at 1:52.09, more than three seconds ahead of his nearest competitor, China's Wu Peng.
World records are supposed to be broken by hundredths of a second, tenths at the most. They're supposed to be whittled down over time, one tiny tick of the stopwatch every couple of years, with even the most marginal improvements garnering huge headlines and celebration.
In swimming, 1.62 seconds is a staggering amount of time, not that different from Bob Beamon soaring nearly two feet past the world record in the 1968 Olympic long jump in Mexico City. Beamon was 22 at the time, just a year older than Phelps.
But in the opinion of U.S. Swim coach Mark Schubert, what Phelps did may have been even better.
"I don't think it's comparable to Beamon's performance because that was a lifetime, out-of-body experience that we never saw again," Schubert said, alluding to the fact that Beamon never broke the 29-foot barrier again after jumping 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches. "I think we're going to see an even better time from Michael. I just think he's that good."
The more apt comparison may be Tiger Woods winning the 2000 U.S. Open by a record 15 strokes. That same year, Woods also won the British Open by eight strokes.
Either way, it's a stunning achievement.
"I guess we're doing something right in the pool back home," Phelps joked, adding that weight training has increased his overall strength in the past two years.
The Maryland native was so good yesterday that he left not only the crowd in awe, but his fellow competitors as well.
"I'm honored to have swam in that race with him," Russia's Nikolai Skvortsov, the bronze-medal winner in the 200 butterfly, said through an interpreter.
