BEIJING — In the international melting pot that is the Olympic Village, Michael Phelps is in his own world, set apart by circumstance and by choice, his universe seemingly contained in a three-bedroom suite and in the contents of his iPod.

A day in the life of an Olympic athlete would seem a kaleidoscope dream of racing and revelry. In the case of Phelps, the breakout athlete of the Beijing Games, it is a window into a monastic life, one in which fast food, fast friends and family are sacrificed for fast times.

Phelps’s motto — “eat, sleep and swim” — is hardly an exaggeration. “That’s all I can do,” said Phelps, 23, who tied Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals in one Olympics by winning Saturday morning’s 100-meter butterfly.

During the most exciting week of his life, Phelps has dozed in the afternoon and taken Ambien to fall asleep at night, a concession to a taxing night of preliminaries followed by morning finals.

He has enlisted his coach as his bodyguard to keep admirers at bay. And he has scaled the National Aquatics Center bleachers to make contact with his family members, who, despite their seeming omnipresence in television coverage, he has kept at arm’s length while in the sanctuary of his prerace cocoon.

Read More..