heroes

Slideshow: What Happens When Michael Phelps Loses

In the midst of a heated debate (we know we’re heated up about it) over whether and when to officially ban full-body, performance-enhancing swimsuits, something mind-blowing happened. Michael Phelps lost a race. In the World Championships, Phelps won silver in the 200-meter-freestyle competition yesterday, falling behind German Paul Biedermann. Phelps swam well, at 1:43:22, earning his second-best time, but Biedermann’s 1:42:00 beat even Phelps’s previous world record. Phelps and his coach are beginning to get furious with the use of these suits — it just doesn’t seem natural that the German would make a four-second drop in just eleven months from the last time he raced, with the help of the Arena X-Glide polyurethane suit (though, to be fair, Phelps was wearing a full-body suit, too). “I hope there will be a time when I can beat Michael Phelps without the suit,” Biedermann said, as Phelps’s coach warned that the Olympic hero might just stop swimming until the items are banned.

Regardless of how you feel about the suits, we know you love pictures of Michael Phelps (preferably sans suit, but either way). So naturally, we made a slideshow of pictures of him reacting to his loss. Turns out, he’s kind of cute when he frowns.

Slideshow: What Happens When Michael Phelps Loses