Lochte Caught in Wake of Schedule and Expectations

Doug Mills/The New York TimesRyan Lochte after winning the gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley.

LONDON — What shifted the hype machine into overdrive, helping to broadside Ryan Lochte at these London Games, were the world swimming championships last year in Shanghai.
Lochte won five events in Shanghai, including the 200-meter individual medley and the 200 freestyle at the expense of Michael Phelps, in a program whose schedule afforded him more recovery time than at these Olympics.
His most grueling event, the 400 individual medley, was on the final day rather than the first. And on his busiest night of finals, he had 50 minutes – not 30, as was the case here — between the start of the 200 individual medley and the start of the 200 backstroke.
Lochte finished with five medals, including one individual gold, in a performance that he described as “a little bit above average.” It was much better than that, as anyone not using Phelps’s eight-for-eight performance in Beijing would readily attest. But no one would argue that Lochte, a three-time Olympian who turned 28 Friday, did not look quite like himself here.