Olympics: Relaxed Phelps Ready for the Challenge Ahead

He arrived in the media center dressed in board shorts and a fresh slacker-chic goatee, happily shot the breeze about playing cards with his dorm buddies and hanging out in the Olympic village, and when questioned about the monumental task facing him - winning eight gold medals in eight days to surpass Mark Spitz's haul in Montreal - he shrugged and insisted that he wasn't chasing "after any record", just fast times and personal goals.

If there's a more relaxed athlete in Beijing right now than Michael Phelps, few of us have met him.

"You guys are the ones talking about it [the record]," Phelps told a packed press conference. "I've not said anything. I'm just doing what I have to do to swim as fast as I can. I have goals I want to accomplish, but my coach and I are the only ones who know what they are."

In Beijing, the 23-year-old Phelps will compete in five individual events [the 100m and 200m butterfly, the 200m and 400m individual medley and the 200m freestyle] and three relays [the 4x100m freestyle, 4x100m medley and 4x200m freestyle]. He will get some respite in the relay qualifiers, but otherwise it will be a relentless rush of prelims, semi-finals, finals and standing to attention for the Star-Spangled Banner.

"All the races are going to be tough," admitted Phelps, who has set 25 world records - 22 individually and three in relays - during his career. "And I haven't had the best of years either," he continued, citing a broken wrist in a fall last November. "I've had some ups and downs. I guess it's all part of growing up. I've also had my first time being away from home and I probably haven't always made the best decisions. But over the last three weeks training has been pretty successful and I've been pleased how things have gone."

But while Phelps is remaining coy about his chances of beating the six golds and two bronzes he achieved in Athens, Spitz believes his 36-year-old record will tumble in the next 10 days. And so, you sense, does Phelps' coach Bob Bowman.

"Physically Michael is much stronger and more mature [than in 2004]," he said. "He's got a lot more power. He still has the fitness. The biggest advantage he has now is that he's been through the process before so he knows what to expect."

Nothing much seems to phase Phelps. When asked about the morning finals to accommodate prime-time US TV, he replied: "It's the Olympic Games so you have to be ready to swim whenever you have to. Morning, night, midday, midnight - it doesn't matter. You have to be ready to swim."

And despite earning more than $5m a year through endorsements, Phelps is also happy to stay in the Spartan facilities of the Olympic village rather than a plush hotel. "I never thought about staying anywhere else," he said. "We have six guys in our apartment and it's really low-key and relaxing - I don't find it loud at all.

"I never experienced the college dorm before, and I guess this is pretty much like that," he joked. "We're all together in very small quarters, messing and joking around. I pretty much stay there all day because there's not much else to do, either watching films or playing spades - four or five of us, joking and messing around."

Phelps generally loses at cards more than he wins, according to his team-mates - not that he minds much. In the pool, of course, it will be an entirely different story.