Michael Phelps Swims into History

The Olympics are a little more than a week gone and already these Olympics are historic. Just on the numbers side, more Americans have tuned in to watch these Olympics than any other Olympics (that weren't in America) since the early 70s (Mark Spitz's era) and and estimated 1 BILLION people around the world tuned in to watch Team USA take on Team China in basketball.

But the focus on this blog is swimming. Twenty world records fell in the Olympics in swimming this year. This is two more than the TOTAL records broken at the 2000 AND 2004 Olympics COMBINED. I watched a great deal of the swimming events and on one event, I believe it was the 100m Butterfly, I witnessed the world record broken three times. This was just during the heats. Nothing was up for grabs here except moving on. Think about this, three heats in a row, three new world records. The women in these events definately came prepared.

There were two Americans swimming for history in these Olympics. The first was Dara Torres, a 41 year old woman, who has swam in several Olympics before had never fared better than Bronze. She wasn't expected to do much better at these Olympics. But these Olympics have already proven to be far from what is expected. Her race was the 50m freestyle. Her biggest competition was a 16 yr old. She ended up losing the race .... by .01 seconds, but took the silver. Her next race which was less than a half hour later was a team even which she anchored and she once again came in second to run her career Olympic medal total to 19. Cheers to her and congratulations. She truly does show that age is just a number.

Michael Phelps? Well he is just undescrible for words. His medal count is 50 with 38 of those GOLD. Last night a little after 10 o'clock he won his 8th Gold medal of the games. That's 8 for 8. That's 8 of America's 17 gold medals. There was so much interest in his last race of these Olympics that Team USA showed up for the 4 by 100 relay which up until Michael Phelps took to the water in the 3rd leg was actually really close. After his leg it was pretty much over.

In my mind, Michael Phelps is the greates athlete of all time. In just two Olympics he has 14 Gold medals, more than any Olympian ever. With last nights victory he won his 8th of these Olympiads more than any other Olympian of all time. He owns the world record in almost every one of his events. Swimming is an interesting sport. Some of it is individual some of it is team. For Michael Phelps it doesn't matter. He went to China for one thing and that was to win 8 gold medals. He has accomplished that. But not without controversy. In this 7th race, the 100m Butterfly, he was behind almost the entire race, and he finally made his move, but it appeared to late. When he and his rival it appeared on film that Phelps had lost. His mother nearly collapsed at the thought that her son had come that close and didn't succeed. Then a curious thing happened. The scoreboard lit up giving Michael Phelps the win by .01 seconds. Everyone was in shock, even Michael Phelps. The reason he won? The touchpad. At each end of the pool there is a plus sign looking mark that swimmers touch either to finish a race or to make a turn. Well there are sensors in these marks and Phelps' went off first. If you go to CNNSI.COM they have a frame-by-frame view of this victory.

I was in tears last night watching all of this. By the end everyone in the cube was cheering on, not an American, but a swimmer who happens to be an American, Michael Phelps. I can't wait for the final week of the Olympics.

*In track and field a Jamaican, by the name of Usain Bolt, set a new world record in 100 meters at 9.69 seconds, but anyone who was watching saw that he could have broken 9.6 if he hadn't started celebrating with 15 meters left in the race. He was that far ahead. I watched him through the heats and marveled at how he just seemed to be jogging out there while everyone was giving their all. He is the fastest man in the world and he is still young. In a few years runners may be able to run 100 meters in less than 9.5 seconds. I can still remember a time (most of us can) when breaking 10 seconds seemed impossible.