Phelps’ rival illustrates need for foils in sports

See. This is what sport needs more of, and I’m not talking about some golf fan playing a flatulence machine along a fairway to make it sound as if Tiger Woods cut a big one while waiting to hit a shot over the weekend.

Although that was pretty funny.

Foils.

Then. Now. Always. Those who in some form provide contrast to our greatest athletes. Who dare to question and challenge the skill of those considered the best.

Who through a little trash talking force robots to act more, well, human.

We need more of this Milorad Cavic guy.

He is the American-Serbian swimmer who attended high school in California, went to college at Cal and has over the last year done his best to extract more emotion from Michael Phelps than we have seen from the world’s leading expert on black line fever, a condition born from the repetitiveness of a lifetime staring through goggles at a pool’s base.

Cavic is the sort who would play a flatulence machine as Phelps bent over a starting block awaiting a horn.

Now that would be funny.

But this is different from the cliche of a superstar athlete flaunting his bank account and living the jerk’s role through countless juvenile outbursts. Cavic doesn’t play that part.

What he does is remind us about a light-hearted side of sports that is often misplaced.

He first offered to buy Phelps one of those alien polyurethane suits that made swimmers at the world championships in Rome last week zip through water as if propelled by KITT the computer in ”Knight Rider.”

There were 43 world records set. Some swimmers who previously held them beat their record time and didn’t even qualify for the finals of a race. It was laughable stuff, a haul of gold medals that was the kind of fraud only a crook such as Edward Okun could appreciate.

Phelps chose to continue wearing his Speedo LZR suit because it was good enough to help him win a record eight golds in Beijing and he feels a sense of loyalty to the company that has made him millions of dollars and, most important, by now must think Cavic a boob of monumental proportions.

Which makes the story even better.

Did you see how Phelps reacted to beating Cavic in the 100-meter butterfly final? Did you see him rip off his swim cap and tug on the front of that inferior LZR suit the way basketball players do their jerseys after a victory?

Cavic’s words brought out the bravado in Michael Phelps. It showed him in a more genuine light than we have seen in the pool.

(Outside it, pictures of him smoking from a bong and hopping from cocktail waitresses to models to actresses have shown us a different kind, one that verifies what we assumed all along: Anyone who spends eight years doing nothing but swinging arms one way or another and kicking feet all day long will have a few pent up vices ready to be unleashed.)

Why do you think the 100-meter dash is among the most popular of all Olympic events? Because of the boldness shown by those running in it, the machismo.

Fans should love it when Rory Sabbatini says he thinks Woods is more beatable than others, when Mo Williams guarantees the Cavaliers will beat the Magic and make the NBA Finals, when Freddie Mitchell thanks his hands for being so great before a Super Bowl, then has just one catch for 11 yards.

These things create dialogue. They elicit opinion. They are the basis of what sports should be.

Cavic also has suggested that with no international meet scheduled in the next year, he and Phelps should race each other in a one-on-one in 2010.

”Just some neutral venue,” Cavic told The Associated Press. ”I think it would be incredible for the sport. We meet there, we race the races, and then afterward we just enjoy ourselves. It is a rivalry, but I don’t have any negative energy versus Phelps.”

They should do it, but not in an Olympic-size pool. Instead, hold it in someone’s backyard with a deep end of 6 feet and with Phelps and Cavic wearing board shorts.

Let them just hammer each other from one end to the next until someone emerges the winner and the other bloodied and beaten. Begin the race by sounding the flatulence machine. Good television.

It’s swimming, for goodness sakes. Tell me the last time the sport received this much coverage for a non-Olympic event. Cavic isn’t as good an athlete as Phelps. He lost to him in Beijing and again in Rome. He would probably lose in board shorts out back at Uncle Ted’s house.

But he has the right idea. He knows how important playing the foil is to his and all sports.

He understands fun.

Remember that word?

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He also can be heard weeknights from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on “The Sports Scribes” on KDWN (720 AM).