Michael Phelps may be the face of the Beijing Olympics, but the world's greatest swimmer fades into the background at the athletes' village.
Especially when he shows up in the dining hall at the same time as some of the basketball and tennis superstars at these games.
"Michael kind of goes unnoticed," Phelps' teammate Amanda Beard said Thursday. "Obviously, people know who he is, but he kind of walks around like most of the other athletes here. A lot of people might know his name, so he has good recognition that way, but as far as putting a face to it, maybe not as much as somebody like LeBron James or Kobe Bryant or Roger Federer."
That trio of millionaires is swarmed by other athletes wanting autographs and photos. Phelps, on the other hand, said he gets asked for "a few pictures here and there, but nothing major."
Helping divert some of the attention from Phelps is teammate Dara Torres, a 41-year-old mother competing in her fifth Olympics, a record for an American swimmer.
"It doesn't bother me at all," he said.
Beard, who posed nude for an anti-fur campaign poster unveiled this week, cheekily suggested how Phelps could put himself out there more.
"Come on, Michael," she said. "Get naked!"
Not likely.
But he has been quite the cover boy leading into the Olympics, gracing the front of everything from Sports Illustrated to Men's Journal. He's highly visible in advertisements around Beijing, too, hawking products that help him earn $5 million a year from his sponsors.
"It's all a part of my big goal of trying to raise the bar in the sport of swimming," Phelps said.
The biggest way he could help turn his sport into something people pay attention to more than once every four years is by winning eight gold medals and becoming the greatest Olympian ever. Actually, he needs only four golds at these games to become the first Olympian in history to win 10 golds.
"I'm sure Michael Phelps will be the best athlete of these games, however many medals he wins _ five or six or seven or eight," FINA executive director Cornel Marculescu said. "He's a fantastic athlete and a very nice kid."
The 23-year-old, six-time gold medalist has been killing time before opening his bid Saturday night by teaming with rival Ryan Lochte to play two-on-two games of spades in his room.
"You have to get good cards, but you also have to play cards at the right time," Phelps said, describing the game as a combination of chance and skill. "We've won the last two, so we're starting on a hot streak. We're hopefully going to get over .500."
Phelps will skip Friday night's opening ceremony, as he always does to stay off his feet, and watch the spectacle on TV.
Then he and Lochte will put their friendship aside long enough to swim preliminaries of the 400-meter individual medley Saturday night. They'll come back for the finals Sunday morning, giving Americans the first of eight prime-time television appearances by Phelps.
The duo swam a memorable 400 IM final at the U.S. trials in June, when Phelps won in 4 minutes, 5.25 seconds, Lochte finished second and both went under world-record time.
"I'm just ready for it to be here," Phelps said.
So is his coach Bob Bowman.
"I'm looking forward to the 400 IM because I can't wait for this thing to get started," he said. "That's my favorite race anyway. That was the best, most exciting race at trials."
Lochte and Ian Crocker are considered the swimmers with the best shot of foiling Phelps' gold-medal rush.
"He loves to be pushed," Bowman said. "It's so hard when you sort of separate yourself from everyone else to go to the well and just do it on your own. He said if Ryan hadn't been there (at trials), he wouldn't have gone 4:05."
Besides his rivals, Phelps' biggest challenges over the eight-night competition will be getting plenty of rest, recovering between swims and eating enough.
If he can balance all that and break Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals?
"It would certainly be one of a kind," he said.
