RIO DE JANEIRO — When Michael Phelps finished swimming at Olympic Trials five weeks ago, neither he nor his longtime coach, Bob Bowman, felt confident about the coming games.
Phelps had swum as well as he needed to, winning his three individual finals, but his times were "mediocre" in Bowman's words.
By contrast, Phelps' first swim in Rio, in which he gave the United States a decisive lead in the 4x100-meter relay, was anything but ordinary. In fact, he swam the fastest 100-meter split of his career, a remarkable feat at age 31.
How did Phelps get from one point to another?
It's a story of his enduring faith in Bowman and of his own uncanny ability to summon his best swims for the biggest meets.
If Phelps did not leave Omaha, Neb., feeling content in his form, he still maintained his belief that Bowman would figure out the right tweaks in the build-up to Rio. After all, the two of them had always solved the Olympic puzzle in the past.
Phelps didn't swim the 100 meters at trials and hadn't done anything this year to indicate he deserved a spot on the relay team. His freestyle form had been spotty ever since he came out of retirement in April 2014.
Bowman acknowledged that five weeks ago, he had no confidence Phelps would merit a spot on the 4x100 team.
What Phelps did have was a remarkable resume of past relay performances and a desire to restore the U.S. to its familiar perch as a relay power.
So Bowman, the overall coach of the American men for these Olympics, gave him chances to prove himself at the team's post-trials training camps in San Antonio and Atlanta.
Phelps responded, training better and better as the weeks passed.
"He kept having these little confidence builders," Bowman recalled. "Every third day in San Antonio, we'd do something and he'd say, 'That was pretty good.' And I'd say, 'Yeah, they're good.' So he just started putting those back to back."
At a relay time trial in Atlanta, about a week before the start of the Olympics, he convinced both teammates and coaches he was near peak form, swimming a 48.5-second split.
"He proved he belonged," said Nathan Adrian, who swam the anchor leg on the victorious U.S. relay.
"I felt like all along the way, we decided as a staff our only goal was to win a gold medal," Bowman said. "Not to be politically correct or follow some rule but to do whatever we needed to do to put four guys up there who would win."
By Sunday, Bowman had seen enough that he was not surprised when Phelps crushed his relay split.
"He's a pretty good swimmer," he deadpanned afterward. "We have seen some stuff like that in practice. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been on it."
For his part, Phelps rode the energy of a raucous crowd, something he does as well as any swimmer. "When I was on the block, I honestly thought my heart might explode out of my chest," he said.
Once the swim began, he pulled out some of the magic only he possesses, especially on the 50-meter underwater turn that gave the U.S. a lead it would not relinquish.
Bowman said it was perhaps the best freestyle turn of Phelps' career. Again, a remarkable statement to make about a 31-year-old who entered the race with 22 Olympic medals to his name.
"He knows what it's going to take," Bowman said. "He knows how to swim it."
After 20 years of studying Phelps, he's learned that when the most prolific gold medalist ever starts a meet like this, it's a great omen.
"When one thing is really good, everything is pretty good," Bowman said. "He doesn't usually work in parts."
A frightful thought for the swimmers who will have to deal with Phelps in the 200-meter butterfly, the 200-meter individual medley and finally, the 100 butterfly.
After the race, Phelps provided a warm shoulder to lean on for the two younger swimmers in the relay, Ryan Held and Caeleb Dressel, both of whom were overcome with emotion.
"I kind of told them beforehand, 'It's okay to sing and it's okay to cry,'" he noted. "It's good to see the emotion out of those young guys. For me, as one of the old dudes, I think it's great to see."
The "old dude" was all smiles. He knew he was back where he wanted to be.