For Phelps & Lochte, another matchless episode of long-running hit

    Gonna take a sentimental journey
 
    Gonna set my heart at ease
 
    Gonna make a sentimental journey
 
    To renew old memories
 
           -- From the classic 1945 No. 1 hit song, “Sentimental Journey”

OMAHA, Neb. – They should have cleared everyone else out of the pool, leaving Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte in a match race, because that is what Friday night’s final of the 200-meter individual medley at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming turned out to be.

Again.

No one expected anything else from the two men who have battled each other for global supremacy in the event over 13 years, creating the greatest rivalry in the history of their sport.

And the two 31-year-olds now have a chance to do it one more time at the 2016 Olympics next month in Rio.

“It isn’t over,” Lochte said. “We’ve still got another month to put everything together and really give the world a show.”

There never has been a longer-running hit in the sport.

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Phelps, Lochte Going At Each Other Again In Their Sport's Greatest Rivalry

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OMAHA, Neb. -- One more time, for old times’ sake.

One more chapter, possibly the last, in a riveting story.

One more chance for Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte to have at each other using all four of swimming’s strokes in what Lochte justifiably called, “One of the greatest rivalries in sports.”

Friday night, these 31-year-olds will meet in the final of the 200-meter IM at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming for the fourth straight time. Phelps has won the first three, with Lochte second each time by a progressively smaller margin, just .09 seconds in 2012.

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After cruising along, Katie Ledecky puts smoke on the water

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OMAHA, Neb. - Katie Ledecky figured this would be a perfect time to multitask at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming.

Ledecky was cruising along so far ahead of the field two-thirds of the way through her 800-meter freestyle heat Friday morning that she spontaneously decided to give herself something else to do.

“Around the 550 mark, I was like, `We’ll practice my 100 free finish for tonight,’” Ledecky said, with a big grin.

And that’s what it looked like, especially in the final 25 meters, when she seriously engaged her legs for the first time in the 800. She blasted the last lap in a brisk 28.71 seconds.

And, by the way, she covered the entire 800 in 8 minutes, 10.91 seconds, merely the third-fastest time ever – behind the 8:06.68 she swam in January and an 8:07.39 from last year’s world championships.

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For Michael Phelps, Five Is Another Magic Number

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OMAHA, Neb. – The simple gesture spoke of a number, and it was appropriate, for matchless numbers have defined so much of Michel Phelps’ swimming career.

This time, the number was a five, which Phelps noted by holding up his left hand and spreading the fingers wide after he won Wednesday night’s 200-meter butterfly final at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Swimming.

It meant Phelps, who turns 31 Thursday, had become the first man to make five U.S. Olympic swim teams.

“God, I’ve been in the sport a long time,” Phelps said.

Michael Phelps' infant son.  Tweet from his sister, Hilary.

He had been just 15 when he made his first team in 2000, also in the 200 butterfly. He was then the youngest U.S. men’s Olympic swimmer since 1932. Should he win an individual event gold medal at the upcoming Rio Olympic Games, he would be the oldest man ever to do that in the Olympics.

Dara Torres, the only other U.S. swimmer to make five Olympic teams, distinguished herself as the oldest swimmer (41) to win an Olympic medal.

Phelps made the team for what he swears will be a final time with a swim he called harder than any in his life. He did it by going out hard and hoping to hang on, the same way he has managed to hang on and push forward despite a tidal wave of personal drama.

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‘Hurdle Nerd’ Harrison Defies The Clock In Night-And-Day Effort To Make This Her Time

Keni Harrison competing at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing.  (Getty Images)

It’s 2 a.m. A text message pops into Edrick Floreal’s phone. Whether Floreal is still awake when it arrives or sees it a few hours later, he doesn’t have to look at the message to know who sent it.

Who else would be seeking answers in the wee hours to questions about biomechanics and physics?

The Harrison family, which includes nine adoptees (including Keni, front row, 2d from left) among their 11 children, at Christmas 2015.  (Photo courtesy Harrison family.)

Who else would have just finished watching video of her latest workout and wondering what her coach has to say about takeoff angle and velocity?

Who else but Keni Harrison, the woman whom Floreal calls the “hurdle nerd,” no matter that attention deficit disorder has always made written instruction, especially in math, a struggle for her?

“When it comes time to talk hurdling, she turns into some kind of Einstein,” Floreal said.

It doesn’t seem to make any difference that Floreal has told her she should be sleeping rather than thinking and talking (in the virtual sense) about hurdles at 2 a.m. He tried pointing out to her that if Harrison were going to stay up worrying, he was going to go to sleep, so the responses still would have to wait until the next morning.

“When I’m up at night, I like to go through what I did that day,” Harrison said. “When I have a question, I don’t look at the time, I just text him. I love asking questions.”

Floreal can laugh about occasionally losing this argument. He knows that the way Harrison processes the answers about the best way to run 100 meters while hurdling ten 33-inch-high barriers has helped make her a global sensation this Olympic track and field season.

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