Ryan Lochte picked up his first medal of the meet with a gold in the men’s 200m medley on the final night of the Charlotte UltraSwim Grand Prix. Ricky Berens won his second gold medal in front of a hometown crowd in the men’s 100m free.

It seems cliché, expected, and redundant to label another Phelps swim as a “Can’t Miss Race” – but we must. In recent interviews Phelps has given hinting of a post-2012 competition-free lifestyle, to not acknowledge this potential end-of-an-era seems, at least to me, exponentially more improper.