Bob Bowman

If you made a flip-book of the hundreds of photographs they've posed together for over the years, you would see Michael Phelps growing up before your eyes, getting taller and more muscular, while his coach, Bob Bowman, looks remarkably the same. With the same smallish glasses and the same close-clipped hair, Bowman became himself some time ago, while Phelps has evolved from 11-year-old raw talent to 27-year-old Olympic great - due in no small part to the constant in his life in the pool and beyond: his coach.

As a kid, Allison Schmitt's sport was soccer. She even had a Mia Hamm Barbie doll. If she imagined back then that she would find herself at the Olympics someday, it would have been as a teammate of Hope Solo and Alex Morgan. Instead, she is poised for a breakout Olympics in swimming. "I had the decision made for me when I got cut from the team at 12," she says of her stunted soccer career. "Swimming was a no-cut sport. " Schmitt, 22, is perhaps best known these days to casual followers of swimming as Michael Phelps ' training partner, first in her native Michigan and then at North Baltimore Aquatic Club, and the person the previously burned-out swimmer credits with helping him rediscover the joy of swimming.

In Michael Phelps ' telling, one of the greatest Olympic careers almost began with a skinny dip. It was the first trip out of the country for the kid from Rodgers Forge, and he gawked like a tourist - not at monuments or museums - but at the famous swimmers competing in Sydney. "I was kind of just like, 'Wow, that's this person, that's that person, there he is, there she is. This is really cool,' " he said in a recent interview, channeling his wide-eyed 15-year-old self at the 2000 Games.

One would expect Michael Phelps' coach Bob Bowman to know how to trim seconds from a race and how to perfect the butterfly stroke. But that's not all the famed swim coach is good for. He's got culinary advice too. Fellow swim coach Fernando Buenrostro asked Bowman today on Twitter: "What am I doing wrong if the chocolate cake I'm baking isn't fluffy? It looks like brownies. " Bowman immediately wrote back. "You may be over beating the batter," the next Food Network star answered.

Having swum in Michael Phelps shadow for most of his career, Tyler Clary finally made his first Olympics - and promptly dissed the guy who is headed to his fourth. Clary, 23, of Riverside, Calif., shocked the swimming world Tuesday, when a columnist for a California newspaper quoted him as saying the Baltimore swimmer with a record 14 gold medals to his name doesn't work as hard as he does. “I think the things he could have done if he'd worked as hard as I do would have been even more incredible than what he has pulled off,” Clary said to Jim Alexander of The Press-Enterprise . The remarks caused an instant ruckus online and at University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where Phelps, Clary and the rest of the recently picked U.S. Olympic swim team is training for the Games that begin in 2 1/2 weeks.

Omaha, Neb. — Michael Phelps ' eight gold medals in eight tries in the 2008 Beijing Olympics might never be duplicated. On Monday, someone who could have been able to do it — Phelps himself — announced that he wouldn't even try. On track after his performance in the U.S. swimming trials to enter the same eight events in this summer's Games, Phelps said he would drop one to conserve energy for the others, including the always crowd-pleasing...

Michael Phelps will not chase eight gold medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. His coach Bob Bowman tweeted late Monday morning that the Olympian will not race in the 200-meter freestyle , giving him a slate of seven events in London. "I think it's just smarter," Phelps said Monday. "Sort of thinking of everything and thinking how things went here, I think it's just a better option for me to be able to swim as best I can. And it's going to give me the best opportunity to swim well.

OMAHA, Neb. - Michael Phelps' 27th birthday began with Ryan Lochte trying to crash if not his party, then his 100-meter butterfly race . It's a long-standing part of Phelps' racing portfolio, and while Lochte had registered for it, he was expected to scratch because he already had two races Saturday night, including a big one against Phelps, the 200individual medley. Instead, he opted to challenge Phelps in another race, and the Baltimore swimmer took the biggest piece of cake of the night.

OMAHA, Neb. - It's on: Michael Phelps will seek to qualify for the London Olympics in the 400-meter individual medley Monday morning, a grueling event that he just can't seem to quit. The event will open the trials here, as well as the Games themselves in July. Phelps owns the race, or at least the national and world records for it, but he enters the trials seeded third, to his prime rival Ryan Lochte and the swimmer who said this weekend that he doubted the Baltimore swimmer would try to qualify in it, Tyler Clary.

OMAHA -- While the advance buzz over the Olympic swimming trials has been over whether Michael Phelps will swim the 400-meter individual medley, the women's 400 IM has a bit of intrigue of its own. Katie Hoff, who trained at North Baltimore Aquatic Club in the years leading to the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, let drop Saturday that she's not swimming the notoriously taxing medley -- a race for which she holds the American record and one that showcases...