AUSTIN, Texas — Nothing has changed since 2015, when Bob Bowman left Baltimore. He is still coaching the best all-around swimmer on the planet.

Yet everything has changed. Yes, he has developed Leon Marchand into the closest thing to Michael Phelps the sport has seen since the Towson native’s retirement, but instead of focusing on an elite few, Bowman is CEO of one of the biggest brands in college swimming and national coach of the home team at the Paris Olympics.

From Athens in 2004 to Rio de Janeiro in 2016, NBC kept a camera trained on Bowman on the pool deck, capturing his contortions, whistles and exhales as Phelps piled up the 23 gold medals that led an ESPN panel to proclaim him the greatest athlete of the 21st century.

Behind the scenes, Bowman cajoled, pleaded and berated Phelps, from his days at Dumbarton Middle School all the way to Tempe, Arizona.

“I used to make every decision,” Bowman said. “I was a control freak. … Now it’s more about providing feedback, helping them with their stroke and strategy, allowing the guys and the women to be more independent.

“There is a lot less of me being focused on one person.”

The Paris Olympics begin Friday, and the host nation is counting on Marchand to win multiple events. Bowman swimmers are also favored to win gold for Hungary and the United States. The American roster includes Chase Kalisz, a fellow alum of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, who is the defending champion in the 400-meter individual medley.

All of those people began spring in Tempe, where Bowman was coaching Arizona State to its first NCAA championship, thanks to star turns by Marchand and Hubert Kós, the Hungarian. And all began June at the University of Texas, following Bowman here after he was hired as director of swimming and diving and head coach of the Longhorns men’s team.

Twenty years after he heard skeptics question if Phelps was stretched too thin, Bowman is ready to expand the notion of exactly how many nations a coach can have a hand in atop the medal podium at the Olympics.

“In this sport, if you’re afraid to take risks, you’re going to fail,” said Rowdy Gaines, the NBC analyst. “There’s no status quo with Bob, but they’re calculated risks, nothing crazy.”

Psych major

Minimizing distractions and stress is paramount in the Olympic playbook, but in the span of six weeks Bowman complemented his hand in Phelps’ singular accomplishments with a collective one, that NCAA title; moved 1,000 miles for a new job; and mourned a mentor, Jon Urbanchek, who died April 9. A coaching legend in his own right, he was the reason Phelps wore a dog-eared Michigan cap in 2000, when he earned his first Olympic berth at age 15.

The culture Urbanchek created led Phelps and Bowman to relocate to Ann Arbor in 2005, to prepare for his historic eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

That change of scenery came at the beginning of an Olympic cycle. The move to Austin came near the end of one.

“It makes it challenging, but I’ve just been focused on the training,” Bowman said in early June, during a break at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center. “That’s my constant, making sure I’m focused on these workouts and what these kids are doing. It’s been stressful, but in a really good way. Two of those three milestones were really good. Jon dying, not good. But getting a job here, winning a national championship, what’s not to like?”

Other than that cycle at Michigan, Phelps and Bowman teamed for nearly two decades in Baltimore, putting in high mileage at the Meadowbrook pool. Their relationship was as tempestuous as the floods that rage through the adjoining Jones Falls.

Bowman joined the NBAC staff on July 1, 1996, the day after Phelps turned 11. Bowman was 31 and on his eighth job in a decade. For Baltimoreans of a certain age, his passion and stubbornness evoked Earl Weaver or Gary Williams. Like them, Bowman got results, as Phelps redefined limits. Overlooked in all of his distinctions: 20 years ago, when Phelps was 19, he qualified for the 2004 Olympics in six of the men’s 13 individual events.

The toil that went into that production was accompanied by pain that was often made public. Phelps’ maturation included frank talk about mental health, which became one of his major causes. Swimmers experiencing both physical and psychological fatigue, meanwhile, are finding a fresh start with Bowman.

Freestyle sprinter Simone Manuel, a gold medalist in 2016, overtrained for the Tokyo Olympics and flamed out in 2021, but she found new life with Bowman in Tempe. She’s competing in Paris. So is Regan Smith, a native Minnesotan who left Stanford to work with Bowman in Tempe and followed him to Austin.

“Obviously, Bob knows how to write an exceptional workout,” said Smith, who has owned the world record in both backstroke events. “He’s also good at keeping things very simple. I can really overthink and get too emotional. Bob does a great job of saying, ‘Relax, do what I tell you to do, and you’re going to see results.’ I’ve put 100% of my trust in him. I don’t overthink as much as I used to and don’t get as emotional as I used to. I owe that to him, for sure.”

Bowman has a degree from Florida State in developmental psychology.

“He understands people and knows how to give each person what they need,” said Smith, nodding toward Kalisz, who began training with Bowman in 2008, when he was 14. “Bob knows that he can’t speak to me the way that he speaks to Chase, for example, because he knows I’m not going to respond well to that.”

Full stable

“Sadly,” Bowman said, he no longer has business interests in Baltimore.

After Beijing, he and Phelps took over Meadowbrook but ended their lease there in 2017. In effect, they became absentee owners in 2015, when they relocated to Tempe, Phelps to prepare for his Olympic farewell in Rio de Janeiro and Bowman to coach Arizona State.

Bowman’s affinity for thoroughbred horse racing blossomed in Baltimore. His workplace was down the hill from Pimlico; his escape was Bonita Farms in Darlington, where his horses trained.

“When I moved to Arizona, about two or three years in, I stopped,” Bowman said of his days as a thoroughbred owner. “It would have to be in California, and that’s way more expensive than Maryland. The most fun for me was going to the farm. When I couldn’t do that, it didn’t make sense.”

“I’ve put 100% of my trust in him. I don’t overthink as much as I used to and don’t get as emotional as I used to. I owe that to him, for sure.”

Olympic swimmer Regan Smith on coach Bob Bowman

Bowman spoke to The Banner on June 4, a few days before the Belmont Stakes. Talk turned to his favorite trainers, such as D. Wayne Lukas, who, Bowman said, is “super disciplined, 88 years old and at the barn 4:30 every morning.”

Just as Lukas and other trainers have multiple entries in a Triple Crown race, Bowman has conflicting interests in Paris.

At last year’s world championships in Japan, Marchand obliterated Phelps’ 15-year-old world record in the 400 individual medley. In 4 minutes, 2.50 seconds, he revived talk of breaking the 4-minute barrier, a prospect deemed preposterous until Phelps came along. The vanquished included Kalisz, a training partner who could become the first 400 IMer to medal in three Olympics. He was second at the U.S. trials to Carson Foster, a member of Longhorn Aquatics who is chasing Marchand in both IMs. Marchand will move to Austin in 2025 and begin training with Foster.

Those men are professionals. Since Bowman took the Texas job, the Longhorns roster has added Kós, a world champion in the 200 backstroke, and Aaron Shackell, America’s best hope in the 400 freestyle.

Bowman began June in Austin with a training group that included Marchand, Kós, Kalisz, Smith and Paige Madden, who would finish second to Katie Ledecky in the 400 and 800 freestyles at the U.S. trials. He ended the month in Toulouse, France, Marchand’s hometown, fine-tuning him and Kós, before heading up the French team.

Erik Posegay, UT’s new associate head coach, has kept tabs on Kalisz, Smith and others headed to Paris with the U.S. Posegay came to the NBAC in 2011 and briefly served as its head coach after Bowman left for Arizona State.

NCAA leader

Bowman’s calculated risks at Arizona State, where he spent nine seasons, included redshirting its entire roster during the 2020-21 school year, in response to COVID-19. His career there concluded March 30 with its first NCAA title. On April Fools’ Day, word broke that Bowman was headed to Texas.

Taking the Longhorns job was a no-brainer, with the exception of one negative. Phelps and his wife, Nicole, are raising their four sons in an estate north of Tempe. The oldest is Boomer Robert Phelps, a middle name that honors Bowman, who has gone from being a father figure to a grandfather figure.

“It will be an adjustment,” Bowman said. “I’ve seen them [the Phelps boys] just about every day, but this is the third straight summer I’ve been gone. I’ll have to see what the new normal is like.”

The capital of Texas has always held sentimental value for Bowman. His NCAA title at Arizona State came 23 years to the day after Phelps, still just 15, became the youngest male to set a world record in swimming. It came in the Jamail Center, in the 200 butterfly. Phelps would set world records in four other events and win all five at the 2008 Olympics.

“I have great memories of this place,” Bowman said. “Every time I’ve ever come in here, I go stand in the place where I was when Michael broke his first world record. I smile every time I stand there.”

Bowman and his swimmers developed a fondness for Tempe, but the cratering of the Pac-12 Conference took with it traditional powers such as Cal, which won six of 12 NCAA men’s championships conducted from 2011 to 2023. Texas, meanwhile, won six of 11 from 2010 to 2021. There are other teams like it on campus, as Bowman joined the nation’s best athletic program, by any measure.

Expectations

Texas won the Learfield Directors’ Cup, which tracks performance in NCAA championships, for the third time in four years. In addition to swimming, the Longhorns are also powers in volleyball, softball, golf, tennis, women’s basketball and just about any sport they sponsor.

Football, of course, remains the biggest deal in Texas. Bowman has remained a Ravens fan, and his NFL jersey signed by Justin Tucker resonates here. Before he ever bailed out Baltimore, Tucker was a folk hero in his hometown, as his 40-yard field goal as time expired in 2011 gave Texas a 27-25 victory over Texas A&M.

According to USA Today, the Longhorns athletic program reported a record $271 million in operating revenue for fiscal year 2023. A generation after Bowman had Phelps turn pro at 16, the iconoclast is uniquely situated to capitalize on the transfer portal and NIL — name, image and likeness — money for athletes. Austin is the nation’s largest city without a franchise in one of the four major sports, and Texas backup quarterback Arch Manning reportedly made more last year than Brock Purdy, who took the 49ers to the Super Bowl.

At Arizona State, “our social media department was this phone,” Bowman said, holding up his.

“We’ve got a whole creative wing here to help us do stuff,” Bowman said. “And the facilities … up in the stadium [Darrell K. Royal Stadium], we have a thing called the TANC [Texas Athletic Nutrition Center]. They were showing me around, and someone asked, ‘Are you OK?’ I didn’t know stuff like this existed. Whatever I experienced in other places is just on a new level here. The key element is, we want to be the best. I feel like, if I could do it at ASU, I can probably do it here.”

There is nothing to fix at Texas, where Eddie Reese retired after 46 seasons that saw the Longhorns win an NCAA-record 15 titles and finish runner-up 12 times. Bowman, 59, welcomes the challenge of building on that legacy,

“Nobody can replace Eddie, and I’m not trying to,” Bowman said. “If I walk out this door right now and never coach the rest of my life, I am good. A young, up-and-coming coach, you have to try to live up to Eddie. I don’t have to.”