10,000 calories a day!

[kathryn]

i don't know. i find that really hard to believe - that he actually eats 10,000 calories a day. i swam in college and was nationally ranked as an under 16 and went to 'zones'. i swam between 5:30-7am and 3pm-6pm including 30 min of weights 3 times a week. it was grueling, but your body becomes very efficient and i was eating around 2200-2500 calories a day at 150 pounds (and i actually gained weight if i ate more than that). i realize i wasn't in the same league, but i have trained with 2 male swimmers that went to the olympics in 88 and i never knew anyone who at even near that amount...just my viewpoint.

10,000 does sound so high.
Maybe part of it is not just his training, but that naturally he's very ectomorphic or has a high-burn metabolism, so even if he didn't train, he'd need more than the average calorie intake to maintain weight?

I just heard on the radio that he's poised to break Mark Spitz' 7-gold-medal record.
What a blast from the past! I remember watching Spitz win some of those medals.
I was surprised it took almost 30 (or more than?) years to break that record.

I do wonder, though, if this new guy is making use of some of these new 'not currenly illegal' performance enhancers, the way people say Dara Torres is?