What a thrill! Happy Birthday Michael Phelps - the fastest, most versatile racer ever seen in the pool though now living at a time when we can no longer write such things as 'pity Ryan Lochte, who at any other time in history would have been a giant of the sport'. Day one in Omaha proved beyond doubt that Lochte can take care of himself.

Take a short step back in time: two men in a 400m medley now faster than any Olympic 400m free field up to 1972. Phelps would have taken fifth place in that fateful 1972 400 free final, Lochte sixth. Amazing progress. I can recall watching Alex Baumann (CAN) on the TV - 4:17 - and Tamas Darnyi (HUN) on 4:12, and Tom Dolan (USA), 4:11. Extraordinary efforts. A 4:05 feels like another planet this morning.

It is not the first time that two men have swum inside WR in the 400m medley in the same race when the holder retained the record: Dick Roth and Roy Saari in 1964 springs to mind. In 1976, Rod Strachan and Tim McKee both race inside Hungarian Zoltan Verraszto's global mark on the way to gold and silver. All Americans. Nothing under the sun.

Phelps, who dropped the 400 free from his programme on the eve of racing and has now dumped the 100m backstroke, praised Lochte and his role in setting the pace of the future: 'I left everything in the pool. I would never have been able to do it without Lochte beside me. He is a great friend and a great competitor. I definitely started the meet off on the right foot. When I heard the crowd I had the feeling something special could happen.'

The United States has finished one-two at the Olympic Games in the men's 400m medley no fewer than six times in 11 times of asking and has lost the crown four times, one of those by default: in 1972 Gunnar Larsson (SWE) and Tim McKee (USA) shared the Olympic record at 4:31.98 but at the first Games to use official electronic timing, officials consulted the machine and read a difference of 0.002sec between the joint winners. That was enough for the judge to give Larsson thumbs up and McKee the silver. McKee returned in 1976 and took silver once more. Years later, he was asked about Munich and replied: 'You waste the present and the future when you dwell in the past.'

Back in Omaha, Phelps added: 'Being able to start the meet the way I did helps me relax a little bit more. I didn't want to lose that race, I was pretty fired upcoming into the final. I just went out there and did whatever I could to get my hand on the wall first. You saw how emotional and excited I was after the race. I never really take one hand and thrash the water, I was pretty fired up.'

Hoff followed through with her own world record and spoke of the inspiration she drew from watching the Phelps-Lochte tussle: 'Watching the first race of the meet was definitely inspiring, it gave me chills and got me psyched up for my race.'