Melbourne, Nov 28: American swimmer Michael Phelps, who is on a one million dollar incentive to match Mark Spitz`s record haul of seven golds at next year`s Athens Olympics, will swim five events at this weekend`s World Cup Shortcourse meet here.
The 18-year-old swimming phenom, who won three individual golds, two silver and set five world records at the Barcelona World Championships last July, is entered in the 100m and 200m butterfly, 200m and 400m individual medley and the 200m backstroke.
But unfortunately for swimming fans he won`t be up against Australia`s world and Olympic champion Ian Thorpe in what would have been an early test of who will dominate the swimming competition in Athens next August.
Thorpe, 21, who has just returned from altitude training in Arizona, is down for three events over the three days` competition - the 100m freestyle today, 50m butterfly on Saturday and 50m freestyle on Sunday.
"It would have been fun to race against one of the world`s top swimmers, but there`s a time and place for everything and I guess it didn`t work here for both our schedules that we`ve planned," Phelps told a press conference here yesterday.



"I think we both have things worked out that we want to do between now and Athens, so..."



Asked if there was a `cat and mouse` game being played out between each other, Phelps laughed: "I don`t think so."


Bureau Report