When you swim as quickly as possible, do you pay attention to beauty?
When you swim efficiently, you swim most beautifully. Sometimes you can sacrifice a little efficiency in order to be faster. Overwinding, so to speak, since you get relatively little speed more per ounce of additional power. But you can pack a punch if you still have the raw power at the end. The highest speed is inefficient. The best races are those where you don't need that. The difficulty is to train this and then to maintain it under panic during the competition. If you define beauty as efficiency, the most efficient stroke is the most beautiful.

Therefore, training places the beauty threshold on an even higher level?
Exactly. In training we have discovered that when I swim hard, I cramp up at the end of a series. When I cramp up and show the strain in my face, and either don't understand or am unable to loosen my muscles and show the strain somewhere else, then I am being inefficient. I must put in a lot of effort, but have to save the strength with which I express it. I have to show it elsewhere. That is very difficult.

Relaxing the face is a conscious signal for the body not to cramp up?
Exactly, because you want to somehow show the trainer that you're making an effort over the last metres. Swimmers are often accused that what they do isn't strenuous, and when I then have to dismiss my own cramps away from my thoughts in order to use the strength elsewhere, this is almost counter-intuitive.

As a top sportsman, Rogan respresents a beauty ideal and is a sex symbol. He also makes use of this asset in advertising. Not so consciously. Appearing in commercials wearing swimming trunks - not conscious?
In this case it's more about the swimmer as a symbol. The beauty aspect is very subtle.

The intention is clearly to show a beautiful body, which in addition has a famous name.
I always found it odd, especially since I have been involved in advertising, that it is something special to appear with a naked chest. Because this is my 'uniform'. This is a muted value redefinition. If "Seitenblicke Magazine" wants to have a bare-chested photo, it is something different than if somebody photographs me during training. I first had to make the distinction for myself that these are two completely different things.

Because it's so normal for you to be bare-chested?
Yes. But then again no. Because it could be exploited.

("What is normal for him, is a special approach for the society magazines. How do I achieve the greatest impact? They deal with him in an instrumental way. In one illustrated magazine, the readers are invited to send in their observations, which indicate a Rogan crisis. Mobile phone photographs are requested! The reader as a back-up Paparazzi!")
Did he act in the school theatre? As a young lover perhaps? In high school I was once a butler in an English play. And once a robber. No, I was the one who was suspected of stealing the jewelled necklace. But I didn't steal it; it was stolen by a rich lady. A critical piece about prejudice, as part of the German course. I am looking forward to the Olympic Games, especially if I really get elected to the Athletes' Commission and am able to hold part of the closing speech. In front of two billion television viewers. That is efficient. That is a stage, which I know would be enjoyable for me.

A race every four years, that's it in principle.Other messages apart from the beauty of the 200 m backstroke?
I've got over the need to say something to the world.

At 23?
I have been forced to learn this. When you want to say something to everyone, nobody listens. A message for all six billion has to be so simple that you can no longer identify yourself with it. A message that everyone knows is: Micky Mouse is funny.

The Live 8 concert for Africa?
That's where it gets complicated. Help for the poor would be the main message. But as Tony Blair got involved and wanted to stir emotions, he was criticised for being an instrumentalist of this movement. If you want to bring a message across, you must look closely at which multipliers you use for this. I can imagine becoming more concrete and bringing better messages across. However, I don't know exactly what these messages will be. ("There are also moral principles, which are there on account of the family. He doesn't just want to be instructive, with political messages of salvation. Apart from the fact that nobody allows themselves to be given advice by a sportsman.")

And anything else?
Health and the responsibility politicians and leading figures have for this. And, furthermore, public representation. Using the example of Ariel Sharon. He had already had a minor heart attack. Where everybody said, he wasn't so important, nothing happened. In retrospect, there are pointers that something certainly did happen. I now neither want to, nor am I able to, criticise Sharon from the position of the swimming pool. But if someone carries such a responsibility, then it is also his or her duty to take care of themselves and to respect their body.

That is pretty counter-revolutionary. How do the leaders of our world best remain intact for as long as possible?!
If one would carry out a campaign for health and fitness in Vienna, everyone would know which politician is the least credible. Because one must live out certain things themselves in order to make them believable. Who? The name escapes me at the moment. (laughs)

Top sportsmen have to fit into a market niche. Strive for success, follow rules, take part in advertising campaigns. Why not break out and become a surfing instructor or demonstrator?
You have to take a look at many of the people, who were romanticised and idolised revolutionaries. Che Guevara, if you look at him more closely, did a lot of good but was also a bit of a helpless romantic. What has remained of the great revolutionary is the colleagueCastro or a confraternity, such as in France, with a very exclusive activity where only the brothers are allowed inside.

The one thing is the attitude: I make my own regulations and limitations. The other is what is made of this.
I find my own limitations every day in the swimming pool. I am very conscious of them. My generation has faith in the elders: You have already sought and found the limits, show them to us. When something or other doesn't suit us, we try to change it again. But now isn't time for a completely new revolution. Today, radical revolutionaries tend to be laughed at - this was cool for a time. But when you try to revolutionise the revolution, it then becomes ludicrous at some point. ("Markus is known as a sportsman. If he wants to be committed and credible, then it must be connected with his own life. This creates authenticity. Furthermore, there are subjects that are important to him. For example, there was always a clear division against blue and orange. Because the politics of intolerance and segregation, and the quest for scapegoats isn't acceptible to us.")

Has the social compatability grown through swimming, through the combatting of fear there?
If I don't swim, I am more annoying, more nervous, sweat more, am less calm. It's not through success in swimming, but through an abreaction of my inner aggression that I am more socially competent. If I have too great a pause from swimming, I sleep too little, pay less attention to my health, am more aggressive.

How far can the training go?
Judging by the extent of training, I could almost double it. We are in the training camp for ten weeks, that would go for up to forty weeks. If I had biological time, we could get there in ten years. What would that bring from a time point of view? Probably very little, because you have to train ten percent more in order to improve yourself by a half percent. What we will learn by 2008 is to arrange the training more efficiently. That really every metre has a role to play. We have already made great prgress in this, also in the areas alongside the training. That will become increasingly important; I can't get much more efficient in the water.

Has the world record boosted business?
It has reinforced it rather. That I work properly. And it helped my application for the business school.

What is going to happen with the business school?
Becoming a manger in the broadest sense of the term. Most of all I would like to directly join a company board of directors.

And the branch?
I haven't thought about that yet. It probably won't be Halliburton.