NY Times: Bob Bowman Puts Swimming on the Front Burner

BALTIMORE — The next goal Bob Bowman hopes to cross off his list is making a blue cheese soufflé, which seems like a breeze compared with his previous project, making Michael Phelps the most successful Olympian ever. That pursuit had a preparation time of 16 years, and the execution, in a pressure cooker, required continual watchfulness and a precise mix of so many ingredients that Bowman was physically and emotionally spent by the time Phelps was done.

After Phelps won the last 6 of his 22 overall medals, at the 2012 London Games, Bowman took a nine-month sabbatical from coaching. He passed the time he usually spent in the broiler oven that is the pool deck over a hot stove, trying to duplicate the meals that he watched Ina Garten, better known as the Barefoot Contessa, prepare on her show on the Food Network.

The herb-marinated pork tenderloin was a rousing success, as was the plum crunch that Bowman served for dessert. The braised four-hour leg of lamb with white beans became another of his favorites. For Bowman, cooking offered a palatable substitute for coaching, with meal plans as structured as his workouts and a successful result hinging on the preparation.

Unlike coaching, cooking is a stress reducer for Bowman, who can feel any tension fall away like perfectly cooked turkey meat from the bone when he is stirring and chopping and mixing. The lone exception is Garten’s soufflé recipe, which Bowman’s fear of failure has so far prevented him from trying, never mind that it takes only 15 minutes to prepare and another 30 minutes to cook and has been successfully executed by countless others.

“I have soufflé anxiety,” Bowman said, laughing.

He has no worries that his post-Phelps coaching career will fall flat. Led by Allison Schmitt, who won three gold medals, a silver and a bronze in London, a dozen swimmers from Bowman’s North Baltimore Aquatic Club are set to compete at this week’s national championships, which began Tuesday in Indianapolis and will serve as the selection meet for next month’s world championships in Barcelona, Spain.

Bowman returned to coaching in May feeling recharged, and he has reloaded his racing stable of primarily postcollegians. Training under Bowman’s watchful eye at Meadowbrook Aquatic Center last week were the 21-year-old French star Yannick Agnel, the reigning Olympic champion in the 200-meter freestyle, and the American 2012 gold medalist Conor Dwyer.

Phelps on occasion will join Bowman’s workouts and swim around 3,000 meters, which was a good warm-up in his racing days. His eye is on the bathroom scale, not the 2016 Olympics, according to Bowman, who said Phelps had been motivated to get into the water by his weight gain since retirement.

Is a competitive comeback a possibility? “I don’t discount anything,” Bowman said. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Physically, I think he could. But I just haven’t seen any indication that he is interested.”

If Phelps’s spirit was willing, Bowman would welcome his return to the sport.

“Part of me feels that Mozart should make music as long as he wants to make music,” Bowman said. “Swimming is Michael’s gift, and if he wants to use it, he should.”

Bowman realized coaching remained his calling a few months into his sabbatical, after he perfected his grandmother’s baked yeast rolls recipe, completed a proposal for a motivational book and soaked up the solitude of winter days on a Delaware beach. He showed up at Meadowbrook Aquatic Center to use the fitness machines or complete an Insanity DVD workout with his assistants or tend to his administrative duties, but he made sure he was gone by the time the senior-level workouts began under his assistant, Erik Posegay.

Bowman’s Type A personality can make trying to do nothing a challenge.

“I’m kind of a compulsive organizer,” he said, “so what I really tried to do was be comfortable not adhering to a schedule.”