Bearing Witness to the Mastery of Phelps Rowdy Gaines was older than 15-year-old Kathleen Ledecky, the youngest member of the 2012 United States Olympic swim team, when he began competing seriously in the sport. At Auburn, he was a 22-time N.C.A.A. all-American and was chosen over Herschel Walker as the 1981 Southeastern Conference Athlete of the Year. At the 1984 Los Angeles Games, Gaines won three Olympic gold medals, in the 100-meter freestyle and as a member of the 4×100 medley and 4×100 freestyle relays. Gaines, 53 and married with four daughters, sat down at the end of the United States Olympic trials in Omaha after providing color commentary for NBC, a role he will also fill at the London Games. What was it like to see scalpers on the street selling tickets to a swim meet that you were covering live on prime-time network television? Part of me feels a little like Rod Laver, you know? Not that I compare myself to Rod Laver at all, but during his era, tennis wasn't the same as it is now in terms of popularity. I'd like to think that my era kind of ushered that in. I think L.A. kind of started that going. But I don't want to sugarcoat it. The guy that did it all was Michael Phelps. We have to thank Michael. I think we undervalue his amazing gift of swimming. It's because of Michael that you see 14,000 people here. I'm not saying there wouldn't be 12,000 people here or even 10,000, but I think Michael has transformed this sport. Phelps has made it clear he's done after London. What happens to the sport after he retires? What happened to tennis when John McEnroe retired? Pete Sampras? What will happen when Roger Federer retires? There'll be a new star that comes along. But our sport will take time to recover from that. It's not just American swimming, it's all of swimming. It's going to be a huge wound that's going to take time to heal. Michael has laid the foundation. We're never going to be football. We're never going to be baseball or basketbal, l but I think we have a chance to be a great Olympic sport and a great participatory sport for a younger generation. What swimming event are you most looking forward to watching in London? I love to think of a race that's a duel, that nobody else is going to be there, that it's going to be two guys going mano-a-mano, and you can't get better than the men's 200 I.M. with Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. You can't get better than that at the Olympics. What about Laszlo Cseh of Hungary? He's third in the world. Laszlo will be two body lengths behind. Will anybody beat Phelps in the 100 or 200 butterfly? He is the two-time defending champion in both. I don't think so because now he has the advantage of resting since he dropped out of the 200 free. He's got the advantage of now not swimming the 200 free, and that's going to help all his other events. How do you explain the ability of Phelps, Lochte and Missy Franklin to swim multiple events with minimal rest? I think it's really the way they're wired. I think they have this genetic makeup where their bodies can just recover so much quicker than others. Plus they train for it. You can tell the people that try these doubles and they don't have a clue because they just haven't done the training for it. It's a gift to be able to come back in those short windows of time. I can't even fathom it. I swam four swims in eight days in "84 and thought I was going to die. Literally, I thought I was going to die at the end of those eight days and all I did was 100s.