Caitlin O'Hara for The New York Times
A plaintive voice on the other end of the line was clearly distraught over the loss of a cherished possession. It was late at night at the world swimming championships in Gwangju, South Korea, but the breakfast hour halfway around the world where Michael Phelps, his pregnant wife, Nicole, and their two sons, Boomer, 3, and Beckett, 1, were vacationing.
I had phoned Phelps from South Korea for his reaction to losing his 100-meter butterfly world record to the American Caeleb Dressel last month. Kristof Milak, a 19-year-old from Hungary, had shattered Phelps’s world record in the 200 butterfly earlier in the meet.