NATIONAL POST
Published: Wednesday, December 30, 2009
www.nationalpost.com
The moment that Michael Phelps passed into Olympic legend was barely a moment at all. No, it was a sliver of time, invisible to the naked eye, and very nearly to the digital one. You didn't have to blink to miss it. You just had to watch.
It was officially listed as one-hundredth of a second, but only because that's the smallest increment of time that swimming recognizes, or at least, that swimming can measure. But that was the difference between Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, and Phelps settling for seven golds and an unthinkable silver. It was the difference between great and greatest.
When Michael Phelps arrived in Beijing, the goal was simple, if daunting: Eight gold medals, or one more than Mark Spitz's record haul in Montreal 32 years earlier. Phelps had managed six golds and two bronzes as a 19-year-old back in 2004. He was, four years later, trying again.
Nobody could touch Phelps in the 400-metre individual medley, which he won on the third day of the Games by more than two seconds. After that, it got hard.
In the 4×100 freestyle relay, Phelps swam the second-fastest lead leg, behind a world record from Australia's Eamon Sullivan. And after that, all Phelps could do was watch.
And after three legs, the powerful French team led the Americans by a wide margin - 0.59 seconds, with Alain Bernard swimming France's anchor leg. The hulking Bernard had twice held the world record in the 100 free; he would set it a third time two days later. The American anchor, meanwhile, was a fine but comparatively undistinguished sprinter named Jason Lezak.
All Lezak did was swim the fastest 100 split in history. Just as importantly, he was .67 seconds faster than Bernard. The Americans won. Phelps, on the deck, unleashed a primal scream.
Phelps then dusted the competition in the 200 freestyle, setting another world record. In the 200 butterfly, he was not expected to be tested, but Phelps' goggles cracked and filled with water. He swam the race blind, counting strokes in his head. He set a world record by .06 seconds, and pronounced himself disappointed that the margin was so slender.
"That's by far his most impressive swim," his coach, Bob Bowman, said. "Who could swim a world record when they can't see?"
Phelps won gold in the 4×200 freestyle relay less than an hour later; the 200-metre individual medley came two days later, and it was easy. Phelps had six gold medals; the final race, the 4×100 medley relay, was almost a formality. So it was down to the 100 butterfly. Of his individual swims, it was the only one in which Phelps did not already hold the world record. It was, in other words, his most dangerous race.
On the pool deck, a California-born Serbian named Milorad Cavic stared at Phelps. Cavic had the fastest qualifying time, and he was not afraid. Phelps, in his metallic goggles, stared back.
Cavic was known as a fast starter, and on this day he blazed. At the turn he led Phelps by 0.62 seconds, bigger than the chasm Lezak had so improbably erased. Bit by bit, Phelps began to close. But he was running out of water.
"I thought he was beaten," Bowman said in a quiet moment a few days later.
Cavic knew he was ahead, and in the last 15 metres he didn't bother to look over. He began his final stroke a long way out. "I did not breathe the last eight metres," Cavic said.
Phelps, meanwhile, knew he was in trouble. So with a body length to go, he made a desperate decision. He cut his final stroke in two, and hurled his 6-foot-7 wingspan at the wall. And that was when the moment happened.
Michael Phelps had always been a swimming genius. He had a body built for it - the long arms, the double-jointed ankles, the paddle-like hands and feet, and a fluidity in the water he could never match on land. Coupled with his uncommon drive - he had trained for 317 consecutive days leading up to Beijing - Phelps was a phenom. He broke his first world record at the age of 15, the youngest anybody had held a world swimming record. He was destined for this.
As Cavic glided home, Phelps was obscured in a furious rush of whitewater. The Water Cube crowd let out an uncertain collection of screams. What had they just seen?
The only way to tell, aside from the timing mechanism, were frame-by-frame photos taken by Sports Illustrated. In the final shot before the end, Cavic's outstretched fingers were inches from the wall. Phelps's arms, swinging, were barely above his shoulders.
And in the final shot Phelps's fingers were brushing the wall, while Cavic's were a whisper away from it. The official cameras used by Omega record 2,000 frames per second. When the Serbians filed a protest, a frame-by-frame analysis was required. Officially, it was Phelps, 50.58; Cavic, 50.59. It was the only race in which Phelps did not set a world record.
"Right before my race, my coach, Mike Bottom walked over with some clippers," said Cavic after the race. "He just shaved the hairs that were below my cap, just behind my neck. And who knows? ... These are the differences. Everything counts."
Everything counts. Everything Michael Phelps had done since he was a child, every temptation he had forsaken, everything he was - it was all distilled into 50 perfect metres of swimming. That is what was required.
"I think if we got to do this again," Cavic said, "I would win it." But that is the glorious peril of the Olympics; you only get one shot. In his 17th race of the Games, Michael Phelps cruised to his eighth gold in the final relay, giving him a record 14 for his career.
Afterwards, Phelps stopped training for a time, bought some fancy cars, and got caught huffing pot at a college party in South Carolina. It was a bonehead move, but understandable. After all, Phelps was just 23, and after a lifetime of self-denial had reached a mountaintop alone.
It's the kind of thing that can lead to a certain recklessness, and a certain aimlessness. Phelps said a lot after that last race in Beijing, but one thing summed the whole enterprise up - including what came before, and what would come after. "Everything was accomplished," he said. "I mean, what else can I do?"
National Post
