COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (AFP) — Record-smashing US swim star Michael Phelps has booked his next tuneup for the US Olympic trials and the Beijing Olympics at the arch-rival university of his own US college.
Phelps, who attends the University of Michigan and trains there with coach Bob Bowman, will lead the field at a US Grand Prix series meet April 4-6 at Ohio State University, sporting rivals of Michigan in the Big Ten Conference.
Phelps won six gold medals and eight medals overall at the 2004 Athens Olympics and hopes to match or break the record seven gold medals won by Mark Spitz at the 1972 Olympics in the pool at Beijing next August.
Another US Grand Prix meet on the same dates will be staged in Palo Alto, California, with US women's star Natalie Coughlin topping the field there at Stanford University.
Coughlin broke her own 100 backstroke world record and had three other podium finishes at the most recent meet in the US series last month at the University of Missouri.
Among the other stars with Phelps at Columbus, Ohio, will be 2004 Olympians Katie Hoff, Brendan Hansen, Aaron Peirsol, Neil Walker and Kaitlin Sandeno.
The Stanford meet also features Kim Vandenberg and Olympians Tara Kirk, Jason Lezak and Klete Keller.
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