When the water had stilled at the National Aquatics Centre in Beijing
yesterday morning and Michael Phelps was presented with a gold medal for the
seventh time in seven days, the corridors where officials, swimmers, coaches
and journalists collide hosted the greatest debate of the Games so far. Had
Phelps actually won? The electric timing system said that he had by
one-hundredth of a second but to the naked eye, he and the Serb Milorad
Cavic were inseparable.
After the race’s end, there was the beginning. Serbian officials lodged a
written protest on behalf of their swimmer. They were shown video footage of
the finish, frame by frame slowed to a speed of 1/1000th of a second and
according to officials of the world swimming body, FINA, the Serbs then
accepted the result. The 100m butterfly final, a race Phelps was confidently
expected to win, had become the race of the Olympics. Everybody wanted to
know what 1/100th of a second translated to: if you brought the top of your
index finger towards your thumb, how much of a gap would there be? Nobody
could say; not the officials, not the swimmers. Cavic tried. “It \ could be
just shaving your fingers. It’s something you can’t show.” Phelps won by the
smallest fraction but for the first time in Beijing he didn’t break the
world record in a final. That was okay because if ever a race wasn’t about
the finishing time, this was it. Although it was indescribably close, the
seventh victory was the greatest testament to Phelps’s achievement, and it
earned suitable praise from Mark Spitz, whose record of seven Olympic golds
is likely to be beaten today when Phelps swims in the 4x100m medley relay.
“One word: epic,” Spitz said. “It goes to show you that not only is this guy
the greatest swimmer of all time and the greatest Olympian of all time, he’s
maybe the greatest athlete of all time. He’s the greatest racer who ever
walked the planet.” There had been a presumption, thoughtless and wrong,
that he is so superior there are no uncertainties and no competition. In
this final he was seventh of eight at the halfway point and he trailed Cavic
for 99.9m in the 100m race. It wasn’t how he planned it and even with three
metres left, it seemed he couldn’t make up the deficit on his rival.
“I knew Michael would be chasing me down,” said the Serbian who lives in the
US, “there was no point in looking over. I knew he was there, I just kind of
saw a shadow at the side of my goggles.” With arms that give him a 6ft 7in
wingspan, Phelps came crashing towards his rival and then, right at the end,
the strangest thing happened. Cavic stretched his arms and glided, as
swimmers are meant to, while Phelps kept pounding, as if he meant to drive
straight through the pool wall. No coach would encourage swimmers to do it
the way Phelps did it. “When I did chop the last stroke,” he said, “I really
thought that had cost me the race. But it happened to be the direct
opposite. If I had glided, I would have been way too long and I ended up
making the right decision, trying to get my hands on the wall first.”
He laughed nervously as he recalled those last milliseconds and the nervous,
almost goofy laugh that carries him through immodest moments is what endears
him to us. He doesn’t make a big deal out of what he does. Watching from the
poolside, we had witnessed the performance of a lifetime. It wasn’t class
and it wasn’t technique, rather those last few strokes offered us a glimpse
into Michael Phelps’s soul and it was inspiring.
Like Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines, or Michael Jordan for the Chicago Bulls
against Utah Jazz in 1998, he simply found a way to win. For this was a race
like no other. The day before Cavic had said it would be good for swimming
if Phelps was beaten, a comment relayed to the American by his coach
yesterday morning. For all his politeness and the modesty you hear in his
laugh, Phelps is a phenomenal competitor. If you’re a rival, it’s better to
walk quietly past his cage. “When I’m focused, there’s not one single thing
that can stand in my way,” he has said. “Never has been. If I want something
bad enough, then I’m gonna get there. That’s just how I always have been.”
Cavic chose to stop and taunt. Well, it was a brave decision.
IN SPORT, greatness generally introduces itself before the performance.
Cassius Clay turned up at the Rome Olympics in 1960 and before he threw a
punch, he had beaten the eardrums of those who would listen. I will be the
champion. Woods was hitting a golf ball on national television soon after he
learned to walk and Michael Jordan, when his body became big enough to
support his desire, became the great Michael Jordan. As easily as they
packed a sporting theatre, they fill a room with their presence. Away from
their arenas, they are comfortable in physical space, inured to the
insecurities of ordinary men.
Phelps isn’t like those champions. He stands 6ft 4in tall but measure his
inside leg, what tailors call the inseam, and it’s just 32 inches, the legs
of someone measuring 5ft 10in. As for his torso, it’s so elongated as to be
almost an embarrassment. His ears stuck out when he was young and kids who
wanted to goad him didn’t have to be that clever: “Hey Big Ears, what you
lookin’ at?”
Even now, when he walks into the arena at Beijing's National Aquatics Centre,
you wouldn’t pick him out as The One. Maybe if you happened upon him behind
the counter at a Walmart in some Midwestern town, he would look the part. If
you noticed him on the beach, or with his baseball hat turned back-to-front
at the shopping mall, you would say he belonged.
Without aura or strut, he has dominated the Beijing Olympics. It is his
success that will be recalled from the 29th Olympiad, his mastery of so many
swimming disciplines verging on the extraordinary, and his greatness the
very definition of star quality. When he won his fourth gold medal at these
Games and his 10th in all, he was asked about being “the greatest athlete in
Olympian history” and his reply was pure Phelps. “I think I’m kind of at a
loss for words. Growing up, I always wanted to be an Olympian and now to be
the most decorated Olympian of all time, it just sounds weird saying it. I
have absolutely nothing to say. I’m speechless.”
However, of course, he tried and in his boyish way, he charmed with his
ordinariness. That was the day his goggles filled up with water in the 200m
butterfly final and, blinded, he was forced to count each stroke so he could
know when to expect to touch the wall. “It just kept getting worse and worse
through the race, but it was fine,” he said. “I wanted to break the world
record and I did that. I wanted to go 1.51 or under \, but under the
circumstances, I guess it’s not too bad.”
It is easy to listen because he is never saying how wonderful he is, he never
complains and never makes himself out to be more than he is. He saw his
Beijing experience as a series of swimming races: eight golds would be neat,
seven wouldn’t be bad and six wouldn’t be a disgrace. Understated,
down-to-earth and when he spoke, you didn’t want him to stop.
For the medals don’t fully explain why two million people in the US have
already downloaded a video of one of his races from the website
NBCOlympics.com, neither does it explain why NBC have already recouped far
more in advertising revenue than the $896m (£464m) they paid for rights to
broadcast the games. Phelps has something that touches people, a quality
more often sensed than seen. He went about the business of winning eight
golds without fuss. What time does the race start? Okay, I’ll be there. On
Friday morning he had a horrible schedule. At 10.48, the 200m individual
medley final; at 11.10, the medal ceremony for the medley final and at
11.19, his semi-final of the 100m butterfly. Normally he does a 1200 or
1500m swim-down after each race but there was time only for 400m after his
victory in the 200m medley. He then whipped on his US tracksuit and got into
line for the medal ceremony.
Medal ceremonies drag on and though he had an important semi-final due to
start about four minutes after the playing of the national anthem, he never
rushed his fellow medallists, enjoying their moment and unaware of how
quickly Phelps had to be back in the water. So the three medallists ambled
along, Phelps even stopping to toss his bouquet of flowers to his mum
Debbie, who stood in the first row of the upper deck of the stand.
After the parade around the poolside and once all the photographs were taken,
Phelps had two minutes to get to the start of his semi-final. “I didn’t know
I had as little time as I actually had,” he said. “I didn’t have time to go
into the ready (holding) room. I went from walking off the pool deck to
taking my awards sweats off, to putting my parka on, trying to put my hat
and goggles on, then tie my suit and they were pushing us out. I got my
earphones in but can’t remember what music I played.”
What was lovable was the refusal to lessen the moment for his fellow
medallists in that parade and Phelps’s uncertainty over how little time he
had. When his 100m butterfly started, he was present in body and still
getting there in spirit. He was the sixth swimmer to reach the 50m turn,
which meant the second 50m would be life or death. He probably saw it that
way, too, because he blasted through the final 50, skidding over the top of
the water; at once powerful and technically brilliant. Coaches say his back
barely gets wet when he swims the butterfly. And, no matter how desperate
the situation, he doesn’t lose that grace through water for he can swim no
other way. By the time he got to the other end, his seven rivals were all
behind him. What was lovely, too, was the understated reaction. He pulled
off his cap and goggles, checked the time and was satisfied. No complaints
about the absurdity of the schedule, no hint that his quest was being made
more difficult than it needed to be. It was like this ordinary bloke had
shown up and performed the most extraordinary feat.
Phelps reminds us of what sport can do, the epitome of why we want our
children on the field, in the pool or at the track. He was seven when it
became clear his mum and dad, Debbie and Fred, weren’t getting on. He was
nine when they divorced. Even before that, he wasn’t the easiest kid to
manage; he wouldn’t sit still, wasn’t much interested in school and tended
to stretch people’s patience. “Michael was always very social,” Debbie says.
“Sometimes so social, you didn’t want to have him around. He was a social
irritant.”
Herself a teacher, Debbie was told how difficult her son was in the classroom.
“Michael can’t sit still, Michael can’t focus,” one of his teachers said.
“Maybe he’s bored,” Debbie replied.
“Oh, no, he’s not gifted,” said the teacher. Debbie told that story about her
son. He was suspended from using the school bus after fighting a boy who
ribbed him about his ears and eventually his restlessness was explained by
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), for which he was prescribed
Ritalin.
After two years he told his mum he wanted to deal with his condition without
the medication. By then he had found the water, a place where he could have
fun and feel more comfortable with himself. What amazed Debbie was that the
boy who couldn’t hold his concentration for two minutes on land could swim
length after length and never get bored. More than that, he could estimate
what time he would record in every race and always be right. They had said
he wasn’t much good at maths.
At age 11, he met his one and only coach, Bob Bowman, and his life changed.
“He’s the one who helped me to dream. Yes I wanted to become an Olympic gold
medallist, yes I wanted to become world record holder, a professional
athlete, but he’s the one who said, ‘Dream big, dream as big as you can’,
and it’s finally happened.” He is 23 and intends to carry on, to London and
beyond. In the language of gold medals, he may leave us a work that will
never be equalled.
It is the competitor we will remember. Asked after yesterday’s
fingertip-finish if he felt Phelps was the gold medal winner, the vanquished
Cavic sidestepped and then said, “I think if we got to do this again, I
would win it.” Perhaps the difference wasn’t just that millimetre but
Phelps’s understanding that there would never be an “again”.
Did Phelps steal it at the death?
Video footage and digital stills helped to confirm that the Omega timing
system had not failed in the men’s 100m butterfly. The clock gave Phelps a
0.01sec advantage over Milorad Cavic, of Serbia. It is the smallest margin
of difference allowed in swimming. In distance, the digital still confirms
that the margin of Michael Phelps’s historic victory was 4.7mm.
The contact strips and the surface of the Omega Electronics OCP5 touch pad are
set up to respond to any force between two and three kilograms. On impact at
that level of pressure, the clock stops almost instantly, according to
Omega. The question is, could it be that the bow-wave sent crashing ahead of
the 185lb rolling frame and momentum of Phelps stopped the clock before his
fingertips made contact? Omega say no. Only human touch can do it.
The disbelief expressed at Phelps’s victory is something that Adrian
Moorhouse, the last British Olympic swimming champion before Rebecca
Adlington, understands well. In the 1988 100m breaststroke final in Seoul,
Dmitri Volkov, of the Soviet Union, turned at the 50m mark in 28.12sec, with
Moorhouse back in sixth on 29.42sec and well off the pace. In the last 15m,
Hungary’s Karoly Guttler surged ahead to challenge the Soviet leader but the
momentum was with the man now roaring through the field: Moorhouse. What the
naked eye could not see (even on the slow-motion playback), the clock
decided. Moorhouse was champion in 1:02.04, Guttler second, 0.01sec adrift,
and Volkov hung on for bronze 0.16sec behind. Moorhouse still has difficulty
believing he won. ‘I think I've lost it, every time,’ he says.
Phelps’s win means that if he and his compatriots took the men’s 4x100m medley
relay this morning – for which they were overwhelming favourites – Phelps,
right, will have surpassed Mark Spitz’s record of seven golds at one Games,
set in 1972.
