American swimmer Michael Phelps - the most successful Olympian with 14 gold medals - is busy playing the numbers game. He is trying to decide how many events to race in at the London Games.
After winning six gold medals (and two bronze) at the 2004 Athens Games, he won eight golds at the 2008 Beijing Games - breaking the record of seven gold medals set by US swimmer Mark Spitz at the Munich Games in 1972.
The 1.93m-tall Phelps, 26 - whose swimming is helped by his very long arms (they span 201cm), large, size-14 feet, and unusually flexible ankle joints - has entered seven individual events at the US Olympic trials, which began yesterday. With the three relays added, it means he could race in up to 10 events in London.
At the trials, he will race the five individual events he swam in Athens and Beijing - the 200m freestyle, 100m and 200m butterfly, 200m and 400m individual medley - plus 100m freestyle, so he can be in the 4 x 100m freestyle relay; his seventh and eighth gold medals were in the 4 x 200m freestyle and 4x 100m medley relays.
Phelps, who will retire after the London Games, faces a close rival; compatriot Ryan Lochte has entered 11 individual races at the trials - six of them against Phelps.
After the Beijing Games, Phelps found it difficult to force himself to get up before dawn each day to swim up to 70km a week in training to stay at his peak.
'It hasn't been easy,' he says. 'There have been lots of times when I just didn't want to do it anymore.'
