ROME - — ROME - - Michael Phelps on Wednesday got by, and then some - another world record - with a little help from his friends.
They provided the kind of support you can't find on the swim deck.
"I got a bunch of friends that texted me last night and said, 'If you want to call and just yell at me on the phone and get some frustration out, I have no problems sitting here listening,' " Phelps said, smiling.
Shouting-out therapy - or maybe it was rage against the FINA machine - paid off Wednesday at the world championships when Phelps returned to an old favorite, the 200-meter butterfly, and lowered his world record in that event, going 1 minute, 51.51 seconds. It was his 34th career world record, one more than Mark Spitz. Phelps has held the world record in the 200 butterfly since 2001.
He usually doesn't lose when it counts, and no one was really quite sure how to handle it as the swimming world seemed to spin off its axis Tuesday when Phelps lost an individual event at a major meet for the first time in four years. Paul Biedermann of Germany won the 200-meter freestyle - and broke Phelps' world record.
Longtime coach Bob Bowman had a sense of the moment, detecting the shift in the swimmer's mood.
"You can always tell when something like this is kind of going to happen, and he was definitely there tonight," Bowman said of Phelps, who was more relaxed Wednesday at the pool of the sports complex at the Foro Italico - unlike Tuesday.
"It was more intense, like really too intense," Bowman said of Tuesday's competition. "He was like ready for a death match, which it was."
This time, Phelps found another way, and another suit, to get where he needed to be. The world record he set was one of seven on Day 4 of the meet, bringing the total to 22 records. One of the records set Wednesday was by American Mary DeScenza, who dropped three seconds off her personal best time, going 2:04.14 in the 200 butterfly preliminaries.
In Phelps' case, he had accidentally grabbed the wrong suit and felt uncomfortable in the pre-race warm-up. He decided not to wear the Speedo full-body suit, donning only the leggings from the waist to the ankles.
He said that decision was not a shot at FINA, which oversees the sport and has been at the center of the high-tech swimsuit controversy, but an issue of comfort.
