KEY POINTS:
By the time Moss Burmester hits the water for his first Beijing Olympic race on Monday, he's likely to have lost repeatedly already.
Not in the pool, it should be hastily added. It's on the card table he's expecting a spanking.
Burmester revealed yesterday that he and several of the boys in the New Zealand swimming team play 500. And if there's anyone to watch, it's Dean Kent. "Oh yeah," Burmester said "He's sly. He keeps calling misere."
Cards is one way Burmester, the 200m butterfly Commonwealth champion, is relaxing as he prepares for his second Olympic campaign. He also listens to music, particularly Dub Trio and Fat Freddys Drop.
It's all part of the routine when you enter the biggest event of your life: you've done all the training, eaten all the right foods, and perfected your technique. Now it's time to hone your mind.
And that's the big difference between swimming at the Olympics and playing 500 with the boys. On the card table, it doesn't matter if he plays with the thought in the back of his mind that Dean Kent is going to beat him.
But when he hits the pool, he cannot afford to let himself believe he is inferior to anyone. Not even Michael Phelps.
The United States swimming sensation may be gunning for eight gold medals, including the 200m butterfly, but Burmester was not prepared yesterday to concede Phelps anything.
"You can't put him on a pedestal, otherwise you're not putting yourself on the same level playing field," he said. "Everyone is beatable and it depends on the day."
In fact, Burmester hinted that Phelps' big ambitions may well be his biggest weakness.
"Obviously he's going to have a lot of work. It's a pretty big test and it does help other competitors."
As for the times Burmester thinks he'll have to swim to get among the medals, he said: "There's a big group of people sitting on the 1m 54sec barrier so going around that or under that would be likely."
Phelps yesterday faced questions from about 800 international journalists at his own press conference. Phelps said he too was just biding his time trying to relax.
"I'm in the village, there are six guys in our apartment, it's fun," said Phelps. "We sat around and played card games all day." Maybe after the competition is finished the New Zealand swimmers could challenge Phelps to a game or two. They'd just better make sure they have Kent on their team.
PHELPS AND TORRES STARS OF FIVE-RING CIRCUS
As the man with the Fu Man Chu moustache and the woman with the slicked-back bleach blond hair strode into the room, the clicking of camera shutters was deafening.
And that was just the start of this five-ring circus.
Before every Olympic Games, there are some press conferences which are spectacles in themselves. To that end, yesterday's United States swim team media event was a beaut.
Michael Phelps, sporting new facial hair, and Dara Torres, the fastest forty-something on water, fronted up to 800 international journalists, facing some probing questions and others which were just downright weird.
Michael, have you calculated how many seconds slower the moustache will make you? (Okay, so that question was more in jest than weird, but you get the point. The answer, by the way, was no. He did have a good laugh though).
There was a fair bit of absurdity. Everyone in the world knows Phelps is gunning for eight victories, a feat which would better countryman Mark Spitz's record seven gold bag in 1972. But Phelps pretended like it was some sort of secret.
"You guys are the ones who are talking about it, I'm not saying anything," he said. "I'm just going out to try and do what I want to do. My goals have not been made public - Bob [Bowman, his coach] and I are the only ones who know them."
Torres, a five-time Olympian and the grand old lady of swimming, was asked what it was like to be the face for the "40, fit and fierce" generation. "I just want to go out there for those 40-somethings and show them age is just a number," she said.
But it was not all hilarity. There were poignant moments too, particularly when Torres was asked about her coach, Michael Lohberg, who is battling a rare and potentially fatal blood disease.
Right now, she said, doctors were trying to figure out why his body was rejecting blood transfusions.
A swimmer on the US team, Eric Shanteau, is also fighting testicular cancer.
Lohberg and Shanteau's plights highlight the fact that as big as the Olympics are, they're not a matter of life and death - they're just a big sporting festival. Or a circus.
