A Truly Phelpsian Achievement

There are certain moments in sports that are almost too good to be true. All adjectives are inadequate. In the case of Michael Phelps it was left to Aaron Peirsol, the sublime backstroker to best describe what the world witnessed this past week in Beijing: "I guess from now on when someone does something amazing, we'll just call it a 'Phelpsian,' achievement," he said.

That's an almost perfect way to describe an almost perfect swimmer. Only once, in 17 swims, did Phelps appear mortal: when he came within a fingernail of losing the 100 meter butterfly to Milorad Cavic, finally catching him with a desperate lunge at the wall that enabled him to win by .01 of a second.

It was the only one of eight finals Phelps swam in which the letters, "WR," -- World Record -- didn't go up next to his name or his relay team. Phelps admitted after that race that he felt tired and yet he still found a way to win. Tiger Woods makes impossible putts when he absolutely has to make them; Phelps finds a way to get to the wall first even when he's not quite himself.

Not surprisingly, he more than made up for his 'lapse,' Sunday morning in his final race of The Olympics. When he hit the water, swimming the butterfly leg in the 4x100 medley relay, the United States was in third place. By the time he finished his last swim, the U.S. not only led the race, it had a wide enough lead that anchor man Jason Lezak held off Australian world record holder Eamon Sullivan with relative ease (easy unless you were Lezak) over the final 100 meters to give the U.S. the gold medal -- and Phelps his permanent place in the Olympic pantheon.

"All I want to do right now is lie down in my own bed for about five minutes," Phelps said the day after he won the eighth medal.

He's certainly entitled. But he's not finished -- far from it. All along, dating back to the Sydney Games when he finished fifth in the 200 butterfly as a gangly 15-year-old, Phelps and his coach, Bob Bowman, have had a plan. He would build to Athens and take on Ian Thorpe in the 200 meter freestyle even if Thorpe might still be unbeatable. Then would come Beijing and London -- when he will be 27.

You can be sure between now and London, Phelps will continue to evolve as a swimmer. He has already become a superb backstroker, who might well have challenged Peirsol and Ryan Lochte if he had entered the backstroke events in these Olympics. He can surely add the 400 freestyle to his Olympics repertoire and -- who knows? -- might even consider the 1,500. Even his breast stroke is now very good, no longer even close to being a weakness when he swims the 200 and 400 individual medleys.

Beyond that, Phelps has done what few athletes ever do -- he has transcended and re-defined an entire sport. History's list of transcendent athletes is a short one: Babe Ruth did it in baseball 80 years ago; Michael Jordan did it in basketball; Billie Jean King did it in tennis; Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods did it in golf. (Jack Nicklaus was a far better player than Palmer but he didn't change the way people viewed the sport the way Palmer did).

Mark Spitz was the most famous swimmer in history until Phelps came along. To some degree, he transcended the sport because of the seven Olympic medals and the famous poster half the teen-age girls in America had in their bedrooms after the Munich Olympics. But Spitz didn't build the sport's popularity for two reasons: he retired after Munich -- understandable in an era when Olympic athletes couldn't be paid out in the open -- and he wasn't a well-liked guy.

Most other swimmers loathed Spitz. He was constantly playing mind games with people and he was at least as cocky as Muhammad Ali without the sense of humor. To his credit, Spitz has handled Phelps's rise with grace and dignity, making it clear that he understands how good Phelps is and that Phelps is a more than worthy heir to his swimming throne.

Phelps is as well-liked by other swimmers as Spitz was disdained. He's a quiet, modest kid who has grown accustomed to the spotlight but could probably live just as easily without it. When he made his one real mistake -- a DUI stop in 2004 -- he instantly took responsibility, never made excuses and made it clear it would not happen again.

After he had won his eighth gold in the 4x100 meter medley relay, Phelps made a point of giving credit to the other three swimmers on the relay -- Peirsol, Brendan Hansen and Lezak -- but the fact is it was his butterfly leg that won the race. Peirsol and Hansen were both a little bit off their best swimming backstroke and breast stroke and that's why Phelps went off behind. The 50.1 that he split was jaw-dropping (yet again) and made it almost impossible for Sullivan to have any chance to catch Lezak.

It is difficult to put into perspective Lezak's role in the eight golds. His anchor swim on Sunday was excellent, but the 100 meters he swam in the 4x100 freestyle relay a week earlier was historic, one of the great efforts in the history of swimming and the Olympics. It wasn't just that he chased down France's Alain Bernard from way behind, it was what Bernard did while losing. He swam the THIRD fastest 100 meter relay split in history and lost a full body-length lead to Lezak who out-swam him by an astonishing 0.6 of a second. This is roughly the equivalent of giving a world class sprinter a 10 meter lead in the 100 meters and catching him.

Lezak actually grew tired last week of people asking him if he thought Phelps should give him a chunk of the $1 million bonus Speedo will pay him for winning the eight gold medals. "You need to understand something," he said. "We're swimming for the team and for ourselves not for Michael."

That's not a knock on Phelps, just a fact. The time and effort swimmers put into their sport is almost incomprehensible. To think that a world-class swimmer is JUST thinking about another swimmer is simply ridiculous. And yet, Lezak admitted that when he hit the water with the lead in the final relay he was thinking, "Do NOT get caught now." He wanted another gold medal, but he knew that swimming history was riding on his shoulders at that moment. He more than lived up to the task.

Already there are some who are trying to somehow downplay what Phelps accomplished. It is easier to win multiple medals in swimming they point out -- true if you're great. No one will be talking about Phelps a month from now -- maybe not but they will talk about him 20, 30, 40 years from now just as Spitz was still discussed 36 years after Munich. There are Ruthian feats, there will be Phelpsian feats. He is, in fact, that good.

Six years ago Debbie Phelps made the comment that she thought her son was a "Baby Spitz." As it turns out she was wrong. Her son is better than Spitz -- in the water and out of it.

What's best about all this is that he's not done. He will swim in London and he will continue to raise the profile of his sport. The toughest job in sports the next few years will be for swim coaches all over the world who will have to deal with parents who INSIST their son is the next Michael Phelps, just as golf pros have been delivered the next Tiger Woods for the past 12 years.

There's only one Tiger Woods. And, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there's only one Michael Phelps.