Michael Phelps is swimming in Austin this weekend for the Austin Grand Prix swim meet at UT's Joe and Lee Jamail Swim Center. Phelps is gearing up for one more Olympic games after winning his record eight gold medals in Beijing to go with the six gold medals he won in Athens.
"Its crazy that there's seven months left in my career, its kind of wild," Phelps said on Thursday. "I'm just literally having with with it, trying to smile as much as I can, enjoying myself as much as I can. I enjoy going to work out. There are goals that I still have, they're going to be hard and no I'm not going to tell you what they are."
That was the storyline in China, only Phelps and his longtime coach Bob Bowman knew those goals and it is assumed that he met them with the record number of gold medals. Phelps is expected to swim in six different events in the meet that begins Friday morning and goes through Sunday.
Austin's Brendan Hansen will not be swimming this weekend. He says that right now he is a little beaten up, but remains on schedule in his comeback effort. Hansen left competitive swimming for three years following the Beijing Olympics where he failed to win an individual medal after winning a silver and bronze in 2004. Hansen began his comeback last year and won the 100 and 200 meter breaststroke at the U.S. Championships in August. He said he doesn't want to have to sit on his couch and regret that he's not in London.