Michael Phelps, perhaps you have heard of him, swam into history as the winningest Olympic athlete ever with his 11th career gold medal - and fourth world record of the Beijing Games. Phelps is now looking to go for a record number of gold in a single Olympics at the Beijing Olympics. The magic number is 8 to break and 7 to tie Mark Spitz. He is sitting on 5 right now and is just over halfway there. How many will he end with? Is he the greatest of all time? What happens if he doesn’t break the record? What if he comes second in an event and only gets a silver is it a failed Olympics, is that a failure? These are some of the many questions that will be answered in due time. The sad thing is that he can’t surpass expectations only equal them. It is not his fault that the bar has been set so high but the is little that can be done about that now. In the worst explanation out there...”it is what it is”. Maybe if the media wanted to assure them selves of having a story like this is to stack the deck in its advantage. You already know that there is a pretty good chance that he will be close to that magic 8 in the pool between his own and his relay team events, why not go that extra step? Make him an extra on the Men’s basketball team as a 12th man, throw him on the volleyball, baseball, field hockey, water polo or any other heavily favoured team event. Then he can sit on the bench and or enter the event for a few seconds and then leave get credit an share in the medal, that would all but guarantee a record and take away all sorts of pressure.Regardless of what happens from here on out I have seen 4 world records broken, one by close to 5 seconds and Phelps has now eclipsed the record number of gold overall as well. I hope that he does break the record. As I have stated may times before, I am a fan of seeing history being made that is what I would love for this to be one such event.
2 comments:
Everytime we have seen a dominant athlete in the past, the person gets linked back to steroids, fairly or not. McGwire, Bonds, Marion Jones, Lance Armstrong. I wonder how long before the swimmer's name comes up. Probably once he retires.
I'm not saying he's on them. I really don't think he is, but when you're this dominant, the question is bound to come up eventually.
True, but Phelps is on that voluntary doping program that sees him get tested way more than other athletes. That 41-year-old swimmer, Dana Torres, is on this program too, as are a lot of athletes from the US and A. I appreciate them trying to create good names for themselves, because we can then cheer for them even more.
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