In the second installment of an interview conducted with Michael Phelps and Bob Bowman in Berlin, we consider legacy, remaining goals, their relationship and the most treasured moments on the trail of success

Michael Phelps is totally at ease, with self and surroundings. he is pleasant, polite, very likeable. His feet are on the ground. His words, the voice that delivers them are only part of the story as the most successful Olympian in history sits at the table opposite you. Watch the hands, the tools that guide him through his element perhaps more efficiently than anyone else ever has, the fingers that find the wall more feverishly than those left to agonise over 0.01sec for the rest of their lives. 

When mulling over the meaning of defeat, the swimmer said: “If I do a best time and get beaten, there's nothing else I can do at that point.” The last three words are critical. He does not emphasise them in any way, the words do not stand out in pitch or tone but the swimmer's right hand has squeezed into a fist, his left adjusts his peaked cap purposefully. At that point - but we'll see about that.

So, after all that you've achieved, what is it that still keeps you going?

Michael Phelps: How can I put it without giving anything away. [broad smile]. There are still goals. The best way to say it is this 'there are still things I want to do that no-one else has done'. That's a very broad statement but it's true and means a bunch of things."

Bob Bowman: "There's been more about Michael that has been, until now, about Michael getting in and breaking a world record. But you can't do that forever. Now we're at a stage where whatever he does it is about establishing a legacy."

Phelps nods. A list flashes through my mind. True, there are some records of records still out there, including (and it may be that none figure on the swimmer's list): 

• To become the first male swimmer to win the same event at three Games 

• To rival Dawn Fraser (Aus) in the 100m freestyle and Krisztina Egerszegi (Hun) in the 200m backstroke by winning an event three times in a row. (Phelps has four solo chances and two relays in which he can achieve that)
• To double the gold-medal tally of the next best Olympian. In Beijing he reached 14, passing the record of nine that had been held by Paavo Nurmi (Fin, athletics, 1920-28); Larysa Latynina (USSR, gymnastics, 1956-64); Mark Spitz (US, swimming, 1968-72); Carl Lewis (US, athletics, 1984-96) 
• 
To exceed the record tally of Olympic medals won by one athlete (Phelps has 16, two shy of Latynina) 

• To set a record for medals in solo events (he has ten, four fewer than Latynina) 

• A record for racing on winning Olympic relay teams 
• To convert himself into a sprinter and win the 100m freestyle

I note a couple of the many records of records he already holds. 

Do you know what records of records you have?

MP: I have no idea 

BB: "Every now and then we will come up with something ... like the number of world records Spitz had compared to Michael like you ran [on SwimNews].  spitz records etc. We've been wondering about how many US titles he's won."

Too many to count perhaps? Phelps starts to count and trails out at around 20. We suspect he may have topped 50, which would be another record if reality matches the rough sums.

MP: "I'm more aware now of things I'd never thought of before, like how many records Spitz broke. Before I would be like 'how many?' I knew nothing."

Back at nationals 2002 in Ft Lauderdale, in his 17th summer, Phelps walked back to his team from the press conference and asked Bowman: "Why were they asking me about this Mark Spitz guy - who was he and what did he do?" 

BB: "He had no idea. I'll never forget that, and I said 'you're gonna find out'."

He did but the subconscious feeding of a swimming mind had started long before that as the young Phelps grew up in a world that offered him any number of contemporary heroes to look up to.

Why is the USA No 1 swimming nation?

MP: "Tradition. As long as I've been swimming we've always been the most dominating national team - and maybe that was so in history - I don't know".

The early 1930s, mid 1950s and that amazing world championship of Thorpe and Hackett in 2001 are the only three fair-weather moments at which supremacy took a hit.

MP: "It's like you're part of that country and you have an opportunity to step up and be a part of that national team. That's always been there."

When you look at Bob what do you see? 

BB: You be nice now.

MP smiles for a moment, pauses and speaks as he finds: "He's a very passionate person, he loves the sport of swimming, In my eyes he wants to be perfect. He's a perfectionist. When he's wrong about something he's not happy. He's not happy at all [laughter], especially if you call him out on it. He has a goal and he wants to achieve it and he's goinna do whatever it takes and work as hard as it takes to get there. That's just who he is - about anything.

Have you enjoyed it?

MP: Yes. We've had a good journey. Everyone butts heads every now and then, there are ups and downs but as a whole he changed my career, he changed my life and I wouldn't want any other coach to step in."

Is it harder now to get up and go do it all over again, than it was four or eight years ago?

MP: "At the moment it is. Before '08, him more than me, we weren't as relaxed."

MP turns to BB and continues: "Before '04 and 08 you relaxed a bit and calmed down a lot more than you were before. I think we're both more relaxed now. If you're forced to do something you're not gonna do it."

We consider what 'it' is, which leads BB to say: "I can't have him at this level [the coach raises his hands to display a high tide above his head] all the time, for eight years. You can't do it.  That's another one of his records. I can't recall another swimmer who held the standard he has for so many years."

Neither can I. So which of all the victories stand out most?

MP: The 100 'fly this summer. I never had a celebration like that, so that's clearly one of them. Athens 2004, my first gold in the 400 IM and the world record. My first Olympics and the trials in Indy.

BB: Have you seen the video of that?

MP nods.

BB: You look like a little boy.

Do you remember the moment clearly? [Phelps, 15, finished second in the 200m butterfly to make his first Olympic team, and went on to finish 5th in the Sydney 2000 final].

MP: Yes. Mom was there after the race saying that she didn't watch the race, she just watched the scoreboard.

BB: He turned 6th at the last turn. I remember saying something like 'well, we just go back and work for the next one'." 

Then Phelps, 15, gave an early hint of his capacity for rolling killer-whale finishes.

Did you know where to look to find your mom and Bob? 

MP: I always try to find mom after everyone of my first races at a meet. She always knows I'm looking for her, so it's not too hard. But Bob ... he sometimes even tries to hide!

Olympic trials 2012 - will that be the first moment that you intend to let us all know what it's come down to?

MP: Yes.

Its 2020 - what are you doing, where will you be?

MP shrugs, smiles, shakes his head a little: I don't have a clue. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. Well, I do, but I have no idea where tomorrow is going to take me. I live life day by day. I do have goals and everyone knows that, but I'm not looking down the years from now and saying like 'I'm gonna be married and have three kids' and stuff. I am just gonna go and live life and see what comes.

Is there a priority in that book of goals?

MP: Yes

Is it a single entity or an entity of entities?

MP: Both

BB: We set individual race goals but those add up. That's what we can do, one at a time. Anything else is too complex. if you hit each goal, the bigger numbers will follow, so we don't think about them at each step of the way.

MP: Whatever I can do I get up and do. It's always been one race at a time.

BB: In Beijing he got ready for each race in the same way: the same routine, the same warm-up,  the same interview level. 

BB repeats a thought from earlier in the interview: The thing that makes him great is that he can focus on the thing that's exactly in front of him.

Can you see any of the qualities you possess in the Youth Team you're mentoring here on world cup tour?

MP: I see energy and excitement. I asked Bob 'was I like this, jumping around and being annoying ... he said 'yes'. 

BB: We avoid burdening the kids with expectation. They certainly have talent. He [nodding at MP] never got to be on the youth team ... he was 15 and at his first Games."

What do they ask you?

MP: How I prepare for races, 'how do you focus'. I still remember my first international. I looked around and and saw Tom Dolan, [Tom] Malchow and Lenny (Krayzelburg) ... and i was like 'wow' . But I got so caught up in what they were doing that I wasn't focussing on what I was doing. So I told them here [US Youth Team in Berlin] 'you're gonna see some of the best swimmers in the world. You guys will have a lane and a heat just like they do. Just don't get caught up with what anyone else is doing. Enjoy yourself and watch but don't let it take out of you what you have to do. Warm-up is going to be crazy, crowded. It always is at an international meert. Relax and have fun."

It is how Phelps and Bowman recall, with obvious fondness, the early days, days the coach spoke to SwimNews of back in Beijing in the wake of eight amazing days at the Water Cube. Here's a snippet from that moment:

In Phelps, Bowman found the raw materials that he had been looking for at the North Baltimore Swim Club. "He was so fast, he had to swim with older swimmers ... but by the end of the practice, and at the most difficult part of the session, I saw a little cap moving up forward to the front of the line with each repeat swim. It was so remarkable, I'd never seen anything like it and when I went home that night I couldn't sleep I was so excited, but of course I didn't tell him that."

Instead, Bowman piled on the metres and challenges. After one particularly bruising practice, Phelps leapt out of the water and started throwing water at some of the girls watching nearby. “I said 'you should be very tired, that's the hardest practice you've ever done',” Bowman recalled. "I'll never forget, he looked me straight in the eye and said 'I don't get tired', so I made that my life goal to see if I could accomplish that."

He took Phelps to junior meets where “he would race three times in the morning, three in the afternoon and then I’d say to him, ‘that’s not quite right, you could go again’. Every time he got out and said ‘I’m tired’, I said ‘no, no, look, let’s just try that again, go on now’, and every time he’d get back in and go again.”  

Like the great Tracy Caulkins, Phelps finished last at his first nationals. Next time round he was third. Then he hardly ever lost again. Phelps's exemplary excellence, there for all to see and already being handed down directly to the next generation of Americans, will be a part of a legacy that will ripple and resound down the years to the advantage of Team USA.