Back Porch Swimming

Remember those days when you'd get out of the pool after a refreshing swim, lay back and just want to paint your fingernails? Well, if you're on the Japanese National Swim Team, that ain't happening, along with a bunch of other ridiculous rules that makes swimming look more like joining the military.

Apparently, the Michael Phelps smoking pot thing has freaked out the Japanese, and they are taking the "overly involved parental role," banning dyed hair, earrings and excessive fingernail painting, whatever that means. And, of course, they're being stricter on pot, naturally.

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

The great white shark from Baltimore, Michael Phelps, collects gold medals -- eight at the most recent Olympics, five at the world championships. In fact, he has just become the first swimmer in history to complete 100M butterfly in under 50 seconds (49.82 seconds). You would think that nothing could rattle him, but, as you'll hear from Cullen Jones and Garrett Weber-Gale, when Phelps is around his US Swim team he does not sleep well.

Check out the video after the jump.

The Jaked J01 swimsuit was temporarily banned by FINA (the International Swimming Federation) earlier this year because it supposedly gave swimmers an unfair competitive advantage. Recently, it's been the subject of talk of an entirely different sort, as an ill-located tear in the suit forced Italian Olympic swimmer Flavia Zoccari to sit out of a championship race.

At the Mediterranean Games on Wednesday, Zoccari (right) was forced to stand down from competition after the back hinge of the bathing suit tore, leaving a large portion of Zoccari's backside exposed.

Jaked, the manufacturers of the suit, boast that the J01 is "more than skin," but in Zoccari's case all it did was show more skin.

Zoccari, who was flooded with tears of embarrassment after the mishap, later apologized for the incident.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- Michael Phelps held off a late charge by his rivals to win the 400-meter freestyle Saturday at the Santa Clara International Grand Prix.

Phelps cruised to an early lead, but he had to dig in over the final 100 meters to win in 3 minutes, 48.05 seconds under sunny, windy conditions at the outdoor pool.

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

Track and field star James Carter, a member of two U.S. Olympic teams, has very strong opinions about pro athletes who get busted for substance abuse or have their pictures taken with bongs.

In this video we talk to Carter about his thoughts on the subject. We also hear from track legend Maurice Greene, who tells us what he thinks about Manny Ramirez, while Olympic gold medal winner Dee Dee Trotter tells us who her idol is and why baseball will never change its policy when it comes to substance abuse.

Check out the video after the jump.

Dara Torres, the 42-year-old swimmer who won three silver medals in the Beijing Olympics last summer, is back at it again. Despite squaring off against people sometimes half her age, she continues to dazzle. The latest? She took down Jenny Thompson's six-year-old record in the women's 50-meter butterfly.

This record was achieved in a senior circuit event, so the competition may not have been quite as stiff, but her time was still good enough for the United States record. Even more impressive for Torres, via her own Twitter page, is that she hadn't swam the butterfly since the 2000 Olympics. At all (again, according to her).

In August of 2008, one man completely took over our country. But it wasn't any of the candidates running for the upcoming presidential office, or some sort of philanthropist making waves on another front. It was a swimmer.

If you were an American and you had a television, your evenings were spent watching Michael Phelps chase history. LeBron James and a lot of the USA Olympic team would head over to the National Aquatic Center to watch him compete. He was, for a short period of time, our hero.

That was short lived. After the Olympics, Phelps' reputation hit this skids. He was videoed drinking a Corona at a Ravens game. He made enormous news with his bong photos and just recently has been targeted in some sexual threesome scandal.

So, my question is this: Are we supposed to hate Michael Phelps because of these incidents?

Dara Torres was a worldwide story of hope and success during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, winning medals in the world's most important (some say) sporting event at the absolutely ridiculous age of 41. But, as she is detailing in her new book, "Age Is Just a Number," she did all this while being a mother too.

That's not to say that Torres is focusing on herself in the book though -- her goal is to prove to mothers and, presumably, anyone else, that age is not a deterrent for success. At least that's the impression she gave in a recent interview with Mom Logic.

Michael Phelps was America's Olympic hero last summer, but he couldn't have won his eight gold medals without the help of his relay partner Jason Lezak, who caught France's world record holder Alain Bernard from behind to win the 4-by-100 freestyle relay.

But while Phelps has become an international superstar, made millions of dollars and, more recently, become the subject of some incriminating photos, Lezak has been largely forgotten.

Michael Phelps isn't the only Olympian to be pinned as a partier after having success at the Beijing Olympics. Stephanie Rice, three-time 2008 gold medalist in the 200-meter, 400-meter and 4 x 200 relay, has been labeled a party girl in her home country of Australia and is trying to shake the image, saying she has avoided knocking back shots since the new year.