Is there a broader recognition in Europe that our path should be questioned?
I believe this to be true because, especially in Austria, we are continually being shown boundaries from a political, sporting and social point of view. We have such an urge for heroes. That I was highly praised for coming second in the Olympic Games, for example. In America, my best quality would have been that I was a good team colleague to Michael Phelps. Nothing more.
Then there are the discussions with our colleague Schwarzenegger as well. Where we say to him, 'You should give some thought to what you are doing'. In America, one says, 'He's the governor, he has to make this decision, it's not up to me to contest it'. We are forcing others to reflect to a certain degree.

Professional sport as a controlled ruthlessness is therefore better suited to America than Europe?
Absolutely! That's why I didn't really understand it when I was accused of not being ruthless enough towards my sport. I thought that, in Austria, it must also be possible to do other things in the capacity of a sportsman. But, apparently, that is not so important.

Markus Rogan grew up in a cosmopolitan, intellectual and pedagogically open-minded family, in which a loving-argumentative discourse apparently dominates. They moved to America when Markus was 14 years old. There, he worked hard in high school until he was enlisted for the swimming team at Stanford, a renowned university. Rogan's mother, Margot, is a psychiatrist; his stepfather Michael Schmitz runs the ZDF office in Vienna and manages his stepson. Even participating in the interviews. ("It was always important for us that the sporting ambition mustn't conflict with education.") As a result, an unusual dynamic arises during the discussion. How does a lad with such an abundance of development stimuli come to observe his fulfilment in life as the stereotypical movement within the narrow constraints of a 50 m swimming pool?
My main argument: You don't have to hem yourself in in order to practise a type of sport professionally. This has been misinterpreted in the sense: He has too many other things in his head. I want to prove that, at the same time, it's possible to achieve a graduation diploma with an average mark of 1.0 - I am very pleased to mention this. For me, it would be awful to imagine my grandchild introducing me as: My grandfather was deputy Olympic champion. To be a successful sportsman is not a lifetime fulfilment; an early fulfilment of one's masculinity perhaps. In Islam, it's not without reason that one says that the intellectual puberty is first complete with 40 - without wanting to get involved in a religious debate now. I am not yet mature as a human being, nor will I be in 20 years.

The family as insurance against embarrassingly endless fine-tuning and as an incentive for discipline?
What I have learnt: If you want to achieve something, you must do something for this. Not just once, but every day. A classic example in the family was that my mother said to me: If you don't win any medal in Athens, then it's time for you to stop. It was clear to me that I would perhaps still continue to swim without a medal, but she was somehow right. If I accept the circumstancial costs of my sporting career, then I have to be really good - for the step, at which my swimming is no longer worthwhile, is high. Since I know that I can change direction, I have to maintain the swimming at a very high level in order to be able to justify it.

The old added-value.
We are now once again involved in discussions about what I am going to do after 2008. Whether it would be efficient and fine to continue to swim. Recently I underwent an aptitude test for a business school and was significantly above the Harvard applicants and all of the elite schools. This gives me a real option to continue with my further education after 2008. For, if I only undertake this after 2012, I will be significantly beyond the average age of the other students.

What effect do the virtues learnt in sport have, away from all of the political nonsense of 'Sport would ease the aggression and drug-abuse in society?' Do they help in another competition? Against fear? At work? In love? Can I employ fear as a tool?
("If you recognise fear as an emotion, that's the first step. I cannot say, I only confront fear in my capacity as a swimmer - otherwise it is of no interest to me.") I spent four months preparing for the test. Just like for a swimming competition. I learnt a great deal at the beginning, then took a break to recover, then learnt a great deal again, but something different.
Then I made a trial test, relaxed, put in a very short, tough learning phase, spent the last week relaxing, withdrew from the outside world, then did another practise test, which was even more difficult than the subsequent competitive situation. I ran through the test situation with precision, minute for minute, even with what I would drink during the test, and sat down for the test and knew exactly what I would do. The questions were completely different, but I behaved as though I was involved in a competiton. You click on the last question and you immediately receive your score. It's as though you've crossed the finishing line and you look up at the scoreboard. I had the same anxiety and excitement before seeing the result.
Being in love is something else altogether. The biological process of butterflies in your stomach and this fear, when you're separated from one another and you don't know whether the other person feels exactly the same about you as you do, or as you would like them to, is - in the most remote sense - like when you train and don't know how the opposition is training. But it's crazy to build a comparison.

In reality, many top sportsmen don't want anything to do with their virtues and comfortably make a corner for themselves, celebrating a life after "Being Hansi Krankl" or "Being Anton Polster". Stopping after 2008 would be in line with Rogan's basic principle: Efficiency. For the sake of the career. ("Perhaps also for the sake of personal development. In order to escape the constraints of competitive sport.") It is unlikely that the hero marketeers and those who benefit politically from top sportsmen would like to think that a world class athelete such as Rogan could view his job as a being restrictive.
The annoying thing is that I have proven to myself that I get better when I put more constraints on myself. Only, at some point, you then become the world champion in bean counting. This is a tendency that is not healthy in the long term.

But Aaron Peirsol does exactly that, doesn't he?
("Education isn't as important to him, neither is it to Michael Phelps. These are people who propel themselves into the water, end of story. Social skills are of no importance to them. Anton Innauer is also shielded from his family, who have said, concentrate on the sport. He was treated like a raw egg. That was never the case with us - being torn away from all challenges and areas of life -having no other goals any more. To no longer have to see how he manages his daily life, gets on with his brothers and sisters, how he makes his mark in a civic society.")

Paradoxically, fear is Rogan's best chance against Olympic champion Aaron Peirsol. The American swims better, lies higher in the water, wobbles less. Rogan holds his head higher, has less faith in himself than Peirsol, controls himself and his competitors in the water more with his eyes than with his emotions. However, Rogan uses fear as an additional motor.
I have tried to confront Aaron with this because he ignores it perfectly. He also ignored the fact that I wanted to push him in this direction. It is a gentleman's agreement, not to say: Now you will go under, and what are you going to do with your fears? You don't do this in the sport of swimming. At least, I don't. Everyone knows exactly how powerful fears can become.

Furthermore, with his head lying deeper in the water, Peirsol has a much worse overview than Rogan. In Peking, at the 2008 Olympic Games, Rogan wants to make use of this difference.
He doesn't see me. He doesn't need to since he is faster over the 50, 100 and 150 than I am. I am better at varying the speeds and can be faster than him for a short period. Over ten metres, if I have trained the explosivity correctly. I can win if we are level over the 190 metres in Shanghai. The problem is to be at the same level by then. That has been impossible until now. I go for 150 metres with him and then have no chance over the final 50.

Rogan can cover 100 metres under water without taking a breath. He brushes the boundary to drowning. Anyone who has the nerves to look back across this dark country, reaches this harmonious, floating effortlessness. Does Peirsol swim more beautifully? Does beauty have an impact upon speed?
It's not my backcrawl that's most beautiful, but rather my leg movement for the dolphin, with which I am co-incidentally the world's fastest under water. Aaron is faster on the surface. I wouldn't say that he swims more beautifully, but that Arkadi Wjatschanin (RUS, second in the European Championship races over 200 m, in which Rogan made a world record of 1:50.43) swims more beautifully than me.