Practice Makes Perfect Michael Phelps has the body of a swimmer. He also has the will to win. At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Michael won six gold medals and two bronze. But being an Olympic champion doesn't come easy. Michael usually gets up at 6:00 a.m. and goes to the pool. He trains five hours a day, and he swims eighty kilometers a week. Normally swimmers take a long time to recover and get back their strength from one race to the next. But Michael can recover and swim again in just twenty minutes. Michael loves cars (he has a Cadillac with all kinds of accessories and rap music. He usually listens to music on the pool deck before each race. Basketball is a sporting passion in the northwestern town of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. But Ana was too young to play for her state's basketball team, and so she started training in track and field by chance in 1996. Today Ana Guevara is one of the world's most respected runners, and an inspiration to thousands of young people in Mexico.
Ana represented her country in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and won a gold medal in the Pan-American games in Santo Domingo in 2003. In 2003, she also won the World Track Championship in Paris, France, making her the world champion in the 400 meters. In the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, the whole of Mexico stopped for one minute to watch Ana run the 400-meter race, where she won the silver medal. Ana trains very hard, but she also likes enjoying life with her family and friends. One of her favorite pastimes is to sing accompanied by her father on the guitar.