The joy of Michael Phelps' epic demented journey

Simon Barnes is blogging from Beijing every day. Follow his Games here

Word reaches me out here in Beijing that some people back home think that Michael Phelps is “boring”. They are having trouble because his victories are “inevitable”. Perhaps I should point out that the rising of the sun is inevitable, yet it is the most amazing thing you will ever see in your life. It's inevitable - still - that the swifts fly from Africa to Britain and back every year, but it's still a matter of wonder and joy.

Ah, people say, but we want drama. When it's inevitable there's no drama, is there? I beg to differ. It's inevitable that things are going to go pretty badly wrong for Oedipus, but it's the greatest drama ever written. Right from the first act it's inevitable that things won't be going terribly well for poor old Hamlet, but that's what tragedy means. And Hamlet is still a piece of work that catches the attention.

What about Odysseus? It's inevitable that he will make it back home to Ithaca, but the process by which he gets there is one of the greatest stories that has been told. In fact, it's an epic and it is a joy and a privilege to be part of the epic of Michael Phelps and his demented journey towards an impossible target of eight gold medals at a single Olympic Games. Besides, Phelps doesn't see it as inevitable. “I'm not unbeatable,” he said yesterday. “Everyone can be beaten.” Not a post-race cliché, more an article of faith, without which no victory would be possible.

He said this after he won his fifth gold medal at the Games here. Put that with the six golds he won in Athens four years ago and that gives him 11, more than anyone in history. There are four athletes on nine: Carl Lewis, of the United States, in athletics; Paavo Nurmi, the Finland runner; Mark Spitz, another US swimmer; and Larissa Latynina, the USSR gymnast.

Phelps stepped from the pool after he had won his tenth, in the 200 metres butterfly, and for a moment an expression of utter soul-weariness came over his face - such a distance already travelled and still so far to go. With it came a disbelief at what he had achieved. And this was mingled with a profound relief: he had won the gold despite swimming blind for the second half of the race. His goggles had filled with water, he couldn't see the wall, he couldn't see the line on the bottom of the pool, so he swam by counting strokes, keeping straight by his innate sense of watermanship.

As a result, he won in frustration and didn't go as fast as he wished; he could have broken the world record by a lot more. Can you understand the irritation of that? And then there was the matter of coming to terms with what he has done: “Most decorated Olympian ever - it sounds weird. I was trying to focus on the next race, but I kept thinking ... It's a pretty cool title. Pretty neat.”

But then to shrug off weariness and the wonder of his own achievements and swim for his life again. This time he was lead-off man in the 4 x 200 metres freestyle relay and he gave the US clear water. They never relinquished it. They hammered the world record - inevitably, but nonetheless brilliantly - by almost five seconds. Phelps had yet another gold medal and put clear water between himself and Nurmi and Co. Pretty neat.

Three more to go. The impossible journey continues and things can go wrong. The goggles did their best to stop him yesterday. He had no chance of ripping them off, when he was wearing two of those condom-hats for hydrodynamic efficiency. He had to call on the craftsman, the canny master of his art, for this victory, rather than the usual genius of simple blinding speed.

Phelps has established himself as one of the great names in sport. If you find that boring, you are recommended to abandon sport and seek something smaller, something that is more your size. I believe many television channels offer things called soap operas. Those who yawn when they look at one of the greatest athletes to draw breath will find them just the ticket. Meanwhile, I'll stick with greatness.

Where are all the breasts?

Those who have been watching the swimming at the Olympic Games could be forgiven for asking the obvious question. I mean: what’s happened to women’s breasts? Once, female swimming champions had them, now they don’t. They have broad shoulders and wide chests, but no lumps on them. It’s not quite as it should be. Is it masculinising drugs? Some kind of anti-cosmetic surgery? An early example of massed gene-doping?

No. It’s the Speedo LZR Racer. This is a swim suit that improves your hydrodynamic efficiency, and it does so by holding you in, by compressing the body. This has a dramatic effect on biomechanical efficiency, it means that your muscles don’t flap about so much. Because of this, the process of recovery after each stroke is infinitely easier for the body to deal with.

An expert in biomimetics has suggested that the suit also helps your body to deal with pain: the compression makes the body send less urgent messages to the brain. You can bear it all much better. In short, you go faster. You can always regain your femininity when you have wriggled out of the damn things after the race.

Two of the Australian swimmers, Libby Trickett and Jessicah Schipper, had last minute “suit malfunctions”, rather in the manner of the famous wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl. These happened in the semis and the final of the 100 metres butterfly. Each time, one helped the other to strip off, calm down, squeeze into a new suit, and march out flat and trim and ready to rumble. In fact, the Aussies have a member of staff here whose principal job is getting swimmers zipped up.

Today, Federica Pellegrini of italy wore two suits. Not two LZRs, because that would be illegal. “I put the training suit under the other suit because it can break very easily. In order to avoid problems and show myself naked, I put on another swimsuit.” And I’ll tell you something else, these suits don’t half work. The women have already set five new world records at this meet. The winning time for the 200 metres freestyle in Athens is now just the 40th fastest all-time. So it’s worth looking a bit flat-chested if you want the speed. Maybe the BBC should get Sharron Davies to wear one.

Sex and the springboard

Just managed to catch another round of the synchrinised diving. It was the springboard today, and the British pair, Nicholas Robinson-Baker and Benjamin Swain, were doing their stuff. Their achievement was, it must be said, in reaching the final. Theirs is a sport not without beauty, but it always seems to have a homoerotic whiff about it as well. It all looks like a wonderfully elegant gay suicide pact.