One could say this race began not at the buzzer that launched the swimmers from their marks, and not in the curious Monday night ready room confrontation that captivated the media for the better part of 24 hours, but instead four years ago in a London pool where Michael Phelps swam the most regrettable four laps of his career.
It might have been those four laps that pushed him to swim another four years, though, to this very point in time: the 2016 Rio Olympics 200-meter butterfly final. His loss to South Africa’s Chad Le Clos at this distance in London represented a shocking upset; this was the event that made Phelps a star in international swimming all the way back in 2001.