The location of the office is the same as before -- first sliding glass door on the left. Bob Bowman stepped in from the pool deck at Canham Natatorium and flipped on a light.

"Pretty empty right now," he said.

Except for the new desk and carpeting -- and a fresh coat of paint on the walls -- not much sets the small work space apart from the one used by his predecessor, Jon Urbanchek, who retired this summer as head coach of Michigan men's swimming after 22 years.

But if you're searching for hints of Bowman's famous swimming pupil -- Olympic champion Michael Phelps -- you won't find them on display just yet. Not even in the collection of photographs Bowman keeps on his desk, unless the athlete you're looking for is a sleek yearling named Pickupthetempo, one of several racehorses the coach owns at Bonita Farm in Maryland.

With that, Bowman began to laugh. Not long from now, Phelps will be alongside Bowman, swimming laps and patrolling the pool deck as U-M's new volunteer assistant coach.

Who needs pictures when you have the real thing?

"I'm the coach of Michigan, and he's part of the program," Bowman said of Phelps, 19. "I think he'll help us, but he's not the primary focus. He'll be able to help communicate what I'd like to have happen with the guys."

Bowman is aware of the excitement Phelps will generate -- and the initial distractions it might cause -- when Phelps arrives in Ann Arbor after the FINA World Swimming Championships, which open Thursday at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

Because he's a professional, NCAA rules prohibit Phelps from competing for Michigan, even though he plans to enroll there for the next term. But in his role as the Wolverines' volunteer assistant, succeeding two-time Olympian Klete Keller, Phelps can work out with the team and represent Club Wolverine, the club program Bowman inherited from Urbanchek.

He has been living out of a hotel room since he reported at U-M a week before his Sept. 1 start date. This was after he drove nonstop from Baltimore, bypassing the highway exit that would have taken him on a "two-hour vacation," he said, to tour a noted Frank Lloyd Wright home outside of Pittsburgh.

"I couldn't get here fast enough," said Bowman, 39.

Though he has achieved international acclaim for his mentoring of Phelps -- whom he has coached at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club since Phelps was 11 -- Bowman quickly made it known that his approach is not one-size-fits-all when it comes to training his Michigan team.

"Bob is the coach for everyone; he hardly talks about Michael," said U-M junior Peter Vanderkaay, who won an Olympic gold medal with Phelps in the 4 x 200 freestyle relay. "He's really focused on improving every single swimmer on the team.

"We know there will be a lot of commotion once Michael gets here. But once everyone gets to know him, they'll see he's real easy to get to know and pretty down-to-earth."

Vanderkaay should know. He and Phelps were roommates at the pre-Olympic camp at Stanford University before leaving for Greece.

With Urbanchek, the Wolverines won 13 Big Ten titles and the 1995 NCAA championship. Bowman wants to build on that tradition -- and it's clear by the confident tone of his voice that he wants to do it sooner rather than later.

While he sat in a back dining room of the Gandy Dancer in Ann Arbor, a couple of lunch patrons peered around a corner as Bowman talked, explaining his goals.

"My long-term goal for our program is to contend for a national championship every year," he said. "It doesn't mean we have to win it every year, but be in a position where we can be a top-five team perennially.

"And the other thing, when I'm looking at recruits this year, I want to know -- at least for the top people -- I want to have three or four people that I can look at and say, '2008, these boys can be on the Olympic team.' They won't all be, but that's the kind of people we want to bring in.

"I would like to be the No. 1 contributor to the U.S. Olympic team. If we do that, we'll win the NCAAs."

Bowman hasn't kept his ambition secret from his team, which opens its season Oct. 29 at Eastern Michigan.

"In one of his first meetings," Vanderkaay said, "he told us that he wants to make Ann Arbor the swimming capital of the United States."

Asked what he thought of that, Vanderkaay responded straightaway: "I think he has the skills and work ethic to do it."

By replacing one high-profile coach with another, Michigan has avoided the downswing typical of a program in transition, said Jack Bauerle, the University of Georgia swimming coach.

"People weren't real happy when he got the job," Bauerle said with a laugh, referring to other college coaches. "He's going to pick up where Jon left off.

"Bob is a little of a throwback. He's been so closely associated with Michael that people fail to realize that he's a heck of a coach, even if he didn't have Michael. He knows so much and has such an understanding about training that it won't be a difficult transition."

When Bowman interviewed for the job last spring -- he was officially hired April 1 -- he said he stressed an important point to the U-M administration.

"I said, 'You need to approach this process with the assumption that Michael would not come here -- that you're hiring me to be your coach, not Michael Phelps,' " Bowman said. "And I made the decision the same way; that this is the best long-term thing for me to do.

"Sure, I think it's a great thing for Michael, but I would never make the assumption that, 'OK, so I'm going to come here so Michael has a place to swim.' He will always have a place to swim, wherever I am.

"But for me, this was the experience I wanted."

Bowman said he got chills when he attended a series of functions last month honoring Urbanchek. The number of former swimmers and Olympians who returned to Ann Arbor for the weekend was staggering: 340. Among the contingent was every member of the '95 NCAA championship team.

When a new scoreboard bearing Urbanchek's name was unveiled, the crowd saluted the moment with a raucous rendition of "The Victors," Michigan's fight song.

"I kept thinking, 'How will I ever live up to that?' " Bowman said.

Urbanchek isn't worried.

Each morning around 8, Urbanchek and Bowman meet to jog for an hour around campus -- a routine they started after the Olympic trials in July and continued in Athens, where both were on staff as U.S. Olympic team assistants. For Bowman, the exercise has been good for his body (he has lost 30 pounds) and his mind, just being able to talk with the gregarious Urbanchek, who will move to California next summer.

Acquaintances before, they have become friends for life.

"We don't talk about X's and O's -- Bob is a very competent coach," said Urbanchek, 68, who has formed his own consulting business and will help run the swimming camps at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, Calif. "But with all the university stuff you have to deal with, it's not as easy as it seems."

Bowman will spend the next two days at the world championships before returning to Ann Arbor to join his full-time assistant, Dan Schinnerer, in welcoming recruits for the weekend. As usual, Bowman expects a lot of questions about Phelps before Phelps settles down in Ann Arbor to begin preparations for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China.

Bowman recalled what he told his U-M swimmers at one of the first team meetings, when he went over what he expects from them in workouts and in school. He said: "In some ways, I'm similar to Jon, but in other ways I couldn't be more different. You should be open to that. Don't expect me to be something I'm not. I'm not expecting you to be something you're not."