You’ve only got to look at a swimmer to realise they are different to the rest of us. The shoulders as wide as a Sierra Redwood, the washboard stomach and the slightly unerring absence of body hair – and that’s just the men.
Yes, it’s hard to relate to these human fish but it must be even harder for them to relate to one of their own who takes their deeds to an entirely different level.
In the event you nodded off during the opening ceremony and have yet to wake up, I’m talking about the Olympics. And if you are talking about the Olympics you can’t avoid Michael Phelps.
The phenomenon was the talk of the Beijing Games ticking off gold medal after gold medal and world record after world record as he glided his way to Olympic immortality at the imaginatively named Water Cube.
At the end of day five, the American sat in fifth place in an alternative medal table, his five golds putting him above the combined efforts of competitors from Olympic giants including Australia and Russia, not to mention Team GB.
This was the day the American, who was diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder when he was a child, officially became the greatest Olympian of them all, winning his 11th gold gong overall to overtake countrymen Carl Lewis and fellow swimmer Mark Spitz. But what makes him the greatest Olympian of them is not the medals and the records but how he handled adversity when it came his way. That’s when you find out who the true champions are.
I watched the TV transfixed as Phelps made history in the men’s 200-metre fly and open-mouthed when I saw his reaction to not only winning gold but shattering his own world record into the bargain.
There was no punching of the air and not even a smile as he looked up to check his time. In fact he looked decidedly disgusted. Just as I prepared to berate another jumped-up arrogant sportsman who doesn’t appreciate the talent at his disposal, his big sulk was explained.
Apparently Phelps’ faulty goggles had filled up with water and he had to swim more than half of the four lengths with his eyes shut. He couldn’t see the lane markers or the wall at the end of the pool.
According to Sharron Davies, a British swimming silver medallist at the Moscow Games in 1980, it’s the kind of thing that happens once, maybe twice in a career.
For it to happen in an Olympic final and given what was at stake, for Phelps to not only win the event but to break the world record into the bargain only adds more lustre to his legend.
