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    Olympics 2012 Ryan Lochte Vs Michael Phelps Face-Off in Biggest Rivalry of the Games

    Olympics 2012 Ryan Lochte Vs Michael Phelps Face-Off in Biggest Rivalry of the Games

    Olympics 2012 Ryan Lochte Vs Michael Phelps Face-Off in Biggest Rivalry of the Games

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    When U.S. swim team assistant coach Dave Marsh saw Michael Phelps in a hotel elevator at the team's training camp in Knoxville earlier this month, he thanked the 14-time Olympic gold medalist for putting the 400-meter individual medley back on his Olympic program this summer.

    "I told him, 'You didn't need to and no one really expected you to,'" recalls Marsh. "But now I'm going to have something to challenge my age-groupers with for the next 15 years. As a club coach that's the cornerstone event you want young people to point toward."

    Marsh isn't the only one giving thanks. NBC execs are pumping their fists, London bookies are doing brisk business (as of Friday, Lochte was the better than odds-on-favorite to win the 400 IM, Saturday, July 28, 2:30 PM ET) and Olympic visitors lucky enough to hold tickets for Saturday night swimming are praising their lottery luck. When Phelps declared his intention to swim the 400 IM at the trials in Omaha after months of being coy on the subject -- his tweet of a picture of his shaved face the day before prelims was, finally, the definitive clue -- and finished second to rival Ryan Lochte, he set up the perfect inauguration of the swimming competition of the London Games, his final Olympics. And after Phelps snuck in Saturday by qualifying with the eighth-fastest time, the first final of the eight-day swimming competition will feature the two greatest swimmers in the world battling in the first of two highly anticipated head-to-head showdowns.

    "For someone who wants to promote the sport of swimming, there's not a better way in the world than for him to swim that race," Phelps's coach, Bob Bowman, said at a standing-room only press conference in London on Thursday. "It will be a spectator's dream."

    What's at stake for the two rivals, besides a gold medal? For Phelps, who has a lock on the title of the greatest swimmer in history regardless of the outcome, a victory would make him the first male to win an Olympic swimming event three times -- if he loses and two-time Olympic 100 breaststroke champion Kosuke Kitajima of Japan doesn't win on Sunday night, Phelps will have three other chances for the historic triple, in the 200 fly (July 31); the 200 IM (Aug. 2) and 100 fly (Aug. 3). It would also spectacularly advance his campaign to surpass Russian gymnast Larisa Latynina as the most decorated Olympian of all time. (Phelps has 16 medals overall; Latynina has 18, including nine gold.)