Duel in the Pool takeaways: Lochte, Franklin stay on track

ATLANTA - The bi-annual Duel in the Pool, pitting the top U.S. swimmers against a team of European all-stars, was held last weekend at the Georgia Tech Aquatics Center, site of the 1996 Olympic swimming events. Most of the top Americans were on hand, with the notable exception of Michael Phelps, who has kept a low profile training in Baltimore this month. Even without Phelps, the U.S. triumphed easily, but with the meet contested over a short-course (25-meter) format and with swimmers at different stages of their training, results only told part of the story. Here are some takeaways from Atlanta.

2011 ends how it began: as the year of Ryan and Missy
The clear-cut male and female swimmers of 2011 each closed out the competitive year with impressive performances. Ryan Lochte, who put Phelps on notice this summer at the World Championships in Shanghai by winning five gold medals - including two head-to-head against Phelps - came to Atlanta with little to prove. With nothing but London on his mind, he opted against tapering his hyper-intense training for the Duel, swimming 6,000 meters in training on Thursday and putting himself through another session Friday morning before the meet began at 7 p.m. Then Lochte won three of the four events he entered, including the grueling 400m IM Friday night over Tyler Clary and Hungary's Laszlo Cseh, two of his likely challengers in London. (The 26-year-old Cseh, who finished second to Phelps three times in Beijing and now has to contend with the rise of Lochte, should be forgiven for feeling a bit like swimming's Sisyphus.)

After the meet, Lochte was deferential to Phelps, calling him the world's best swimmer, and downplayed his accomplishments of the past year. "You have four years of training to have one week to make a name for yourself," he said. "All I can say is it's my time."

Meanwhile, 16-year-old Missy Franklin handled her busy schedule with what has become customary aplomb. She competed in five events, winning three, and juggled her swimming requirements with those of a high school junior, spending much of her off-time studying for the two exams (AP U.S. History and AP American Literature) she'll take this week. Franklin said she enjoys the intensity of her heavy workload, adding that competing in multiple events in a short span is exciting, not draining.

The quick turnarounds are something Franklin and her coach in Colorado, Todd Schmitz, are working on in practice, staging training races at short intervals to try to replicate what may well be a jam-packed Olympic schedule for the phenom. Although they haven't yet mapped out her program for Trials, Franklin, who is a near-lock to be selected for the three relays, has the potential to qualify in as many as six individual events as well. Although she won't compete in nine events in London, it's a testament to her talent and versatility that the options are seemingly limitless at this point.

The U.S. women's medley relay team is becoming a force
The near-perfect attendance by the top American swimmers - besides Phelps, Nathan Adrian, Ariana Kukors, Dara Torres and Allison Schmitt were the only notable absentees - meant that this summer's world champion women's medley relay team was intact in Atlanta: Natalie Coughlin (back), Rebecca Soni (breast), Dana Vollmer (fly), and Franklin (free). They competed in the meet's first event and promptly set a world record, the second short course record Franklin has established since October. The competition was not world-class, however, without China and Australia, which took silver and bronze behind the U.S. at Worlds. With the steady Coughlin still a medal contender in the 100m back after winning the Athens and Beijing titles, Soni and Vollmer coming off world titles and Franklin dropping times seemingly every week, the Americans should enter London favored for their first Olympic gold medal in the event since Sydney.