A budding rivalry: Peirsol ready to take on Phelps in 100 backstrokes _ all the way to London

Peirsol ready to take on Phelps in 100 backstroke

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Aaron Peirsol can’t remember the last time he lost in a final of the 100-meter backstroke.

He thinks it was 2002. Maybe ‘03.

Whatever the case, Peirsol appears to have an intriguing new rival in his signature event.

Michael Phelps.

The winningest Olympian ever is planning to try out some new events as he looks ahead to 2012, a plan that puts him on a collision course with Peirsol, world record holder in the 100 back and winner of the event at both the Athens and Beijing games.

“Mike will do well, no doubt about it,” Peirsol told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Austin, Texas. “He’s already been very, very fast and he hasn’t even scratched the surface of his potential in that event.”

Peirsol isn’t backing down from the challenge, however. In fact, he welcomes the chance to go against the world’s greatest swimmer — and perhaps be one of the few to beat him on the Olympic stage. Others are closing fast, too, including Japan’s Ryosuke Irie, who nearly broke Peirsol’s record of 52.54 at a meet in Australia on Sunday.

“I welcome the competition,” Peirsol said. “For a long time, it’s been kind of stagnant in that event. I need it. I think it’s going to help me. It would be much more fulfilling to win against those guys than to win by a couple of seconds.”

The two American stars are set to go head-to-head at the Charlotte Ultraswim, which begins Thursday and will be Phelps’ first meet since he won eight gold medals in Beijing, breaking Mark Spitz’s Holy Grail of Olympic records.

The event is drawing much more attention than usual in this non-Olympic year, largely because of Phelps’ out-of-the-pool troubles. A picture of him inhaling from a marijuana pipe while attending a party in not-so-far-away South Carolina landed on the cover of a British tabloid, prompting USA Swimming to hand down a three-month suspension from competition.

The ban ended last week, and Phelps will be back in the pool for the first of three meets he plans to swim leading into the national championships in early July and the world championships in Rome later that month. In addition to the 100 backstroke, he’s also entered in the 50, 100 and 200 freestyle, as well as the 200 butterfly.

Peirsol will be swimming his two signature events, the 100 and 200 back, as well as a few other races just for fun. This will be the first meet the 25-year-old California native has fully trained for since Beijing, which puts him on an even keel with Phelps. (Peirsol did compete at Austin in March, but he wasn’t in top shape and only took part because it was in his adopted home.)

“This was by far the longest break of my career,” said Peirsol, who planned to arrive in Charlotte on Thursday, a day ahead of his first race. “Probably the most amazing thing about a break like that was just laying in bed and staring at the ceiling for an hour with nothing to do.”

Peirsol knew he wanted to return to swimming after Beijing, but he wasn’t sure if it would make financial sense to keep going all the way to the 2012 Olympics. That uncertainty was removed when he landed a lucrative contract with European-based swimsuit maker Arena, which hopes to re-establish its presence in the highly-lucrative U.S. market.

Arena, once a major player on this side of the Atlantic with American stars such as Spitz and Matt Biondi, planned to formally announce the deal on Thursday.

“There’s some really, really good swimmers struggling to find a way to keep going the next few years financially,” Peirsol said. “Arena is a company that left in the mid-90s, but now they’ve decided to come back into the U.S. market. Actually, it was completely out of the blue. I was surprised they wanted to work with me.”

As part of the deal, Peirsol plans to train overseas at least one month out of the year, perhaps in a country where swimming needs a little boost. He also looks forward to working with fellow Arena athletes such as France’s Alain Bernard, Brazil’s Cesar Cielo and Serbia’s Milorad Cavic, who nearly upset Phelps’ record-breaking haul in China.

“After many years, our elite team once again sees the participation of a big star of American swimming,” said Cristiano Portas, CEO of Arena. “It’s difficult to say something that hasn’t already been said about Aaron, but I can’t make a secret of how much of an impression he made on us.”

Peirsol is sure glad to have a swimsuit deal after the uncertainty of 2008. He had a contract with Nike, but wound up switching to Speedo just before the Olympic trials when it became apparent the rival company had a much faster suit, the LZR Racer.

Nike bowed out of the competitive swimsuit business after that embarrassment, but plenty of other companies have stepped in since the Olympics.

Some 20 firms are vying to get suits approved by FINA in time for this year’s worlds, amid complaints that some are even more buoyant than the LZR, leading to faster times and another assault on the record book. Eighteen world records have been broken this year, an unusually high number coming off an Olympics. And that follows a staggering 108 marks falling in 2008, mostly by swimmers wearing the Speedo suit.

“We’re all just trying to figure out what our goal times for this year should be,” said Peirsol, who expects his 100 back record to crumble before the year is out and eventually push as low as 51 seconds. “Some of the times that we thought were so incredibly fast, people are swimming them so easy and coming out of nowhere to do it.

“It makes you kind of uneasy. It makes a lot of us feel like some of those records were kind of unfair.”