Beyond Trials, U.S. Swim Team Will Find Triumphs Harder to Come By Michael Phelps after winning the 200 butterfly at the trials. He will not try again to win eight gold medals, as he did in Beijing. OMAHA - Comparisons are funny; they can be blueprints or booby traps. After qualifying for the 2012 Olympics in eight events, the same number as in 2008, Michael Phelps decided he did not want to be shadowed by his former self every time he stepped on the blocks in London. Winning a record eight gold medals at one Olympics was enough. Phelps does not have the stomach or the stamina to try to recreate his singular achievement, so on Monday his longtime coach, Bob Bowman, announced that Phelps had dropped the 200-meter freestyle from his Olympic program. "No one should be expected to do that twice," Bowman said. Once was more than enough. Trust me. It was. Five Olympics will have to suffice for the 45-year-old Dara Torres, who finished fourth in the 50-meter freestyle, won by Jessica Hardy, and missed her sixth Olympic berth. On the face of it, the squad assembled at the United States trials, which ended on Monday night at CenturyLink Center, looks like an aquatics Mount Rushmore, featuring Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Missy Franklin and Allison Schmitt. Lochte and Schmitt qualified in four events, Franklin in seven. Franklin, 17, is already drawing comparisons to Natalie Coughlin, who won a record six medals in Beijing, Schmitt, 22, is being talked about as if she were a new Shirley Babashoff, and Lochte is being groomed for his next national magazine cover. The danger in extrapolating Olympic greatness based on trials performances is that the rest of the world will have a say in the matter in London, and as Gregg Troy, the United States men's coach, pointed out, "It's a pretty big world." If Olympic gold medals were awarded based on the current 2012 world rankings, Phelps, Lochte, Franklin and Schmitt would win a combined six individual golds. Phelps, who is left with four individual events, has the fastest time this year in three of them: the 100 and the 200 butterfly and the 200 individual medley. Lochte is the top-ranked swimmer in the 400 individual medley, the third-fastest in the 200 freestyle and second in the 200 backstroke behind Ryosuke Irie of Japan. In these paper Olympics, Franklin, who qualified in four individual events and three relays, would win one individual gold and a silver and finish outside the top eight in her other two events. Schmitt, a freestyler with operatic range, has the fastest time in the world in the 200 free and the third-fastest time in the 400. Throughout the eight days of competition here, the swimmers and the coaches spoke of how the trials are more pressure-packed than the Games because of the racing-suit-thin margin separating the best swimmers from the best of the rest. They pointed to stars like Tyler Clary, who has the third-fastest time in the world in the 400 individual medley but will not contend for a medal in the event in London because he finished behind Lochte and Phelps here. Clary made the team in the 200 butterfly and 200 backstroke. Asked to describe the feeling after two trials" worth of demoralizing near misses, Clary said, "It's like the biggest endorphin rush you could ever experience, the biggest explosion of serotonin in your head." That said, making the team is the prelude to the Games and not cause for a ticker-tape parade. The list of swimmers from other countries standing between the Americans and the medal stand is long and formidable and includes Japan's Kosuke Kitajima in the breaststroke, France's Yannick Agnel and South Korea's Tae Hwan Park in the freestyle, Phelps's rival Milorad Cavic in the butterfly; and Italy's Federica Pellegrini and Great Britain's Rebecca Adlington in the women's freestyle. In the men's 400 freestyle relay, the fourth-fastest swimmer for Australia, France and Russia have all gone faster this year than the fourth-fastest American. "There's a lot of good swimmers out there," Troy said. I think if we take anything lightly, we're making mistakes. He added: "I think we're going to respond really well. It's competition, and we like to compete. None of the swimmers looked as if they were having more fun than Franklin, who will be a high school senior and who was never too winded after a race to laugh and sign autographs.