How we cite our quotes: (Book)
Quote #4
I figured out how to cut through the water, making myself hydrodynamic. Almost every swimmer can do freestyle, but the technicality of the breaststroke weeds out a lot of folks. People either can do it or they can't. There's no middle ground. I might have originally been a butterflyer while swimming with the Red Hots, but after three weeks' working with Brian, I was a breaststroker. Each swim, I coordinated the kick with the pull a little bit more and pulled my chin up while taking a breath a little less.
Then I started to go fast. Really fast. (In the Water They Can't See You Cry)
Have you ever tried to butterfly? It's incredibly difficult. When we try, we look like a drowning cow, floundering in the water with limbs flailing uselessly everywhere.
So it's fascinating to learn that Amanda Beard started out with the stroke that makes us look like we're having a stroke, and then had to work even harder to learn the breaststroke. Sometimes the simplest looking things can be the most difficult, we guess. Different strokes for different folks. (Badoom-ching.)
Quote #5
My breaststroke had very quietly gotten way better than it had been. In practice, I had been working on subtle differences: keeping my shoulders closer to my ears, my hands flatter, my fingertips up when I accelerated forward. (No Limits)
Amazing how tiny, infinitesimal changes can have such a huge impact in the pool. Keeping his fingertips up gave Michael Phelps greater speed. It just shows the skill necessary to make it to the top, and the level of focus required to win.
Quote #6
The United States engaged in fourteen games in that summer two decades gone – six in a pre-Olympic qualifying tournament and eight as they breezed to the gold medal in Barcelona – and the closest any opponent came was a fine Croatian team, which lost by 32 points in the gold medal final. The common matrices of statistical comparison, you see, are simply not relevant in the case of the Dream Team, whose members could be evaluated only when they played one another. (Dream Team)
Think about that for a sec. This team was so good, the only way you could judge their skill was to watch them play each other. No other team in the world came even close. Dang.