Lucky Number Seven

Indeed gold medal number seven was the luckiest of them all. Beyond lucky. In fact, it seemed that some power from above was on Phelps’ side as he swam the last few meters of tonight’s 100m butterfly final. If you didn’t see it (and had the opportunity to see it), well then please just leave this blog because you really aren’t a sports fan. When Jason Lezak chased down France’s big mouth Alain Bernard in the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay to give the Americans the gold by .08 seconds I thought I had seen it all. I hadn’t.

Coming into tonight’s race, I was a bit worried for Phelps. Clearly fatigue had set in. He had swum 15 races before stepping onto the blocks tonight, and you could see it in his face when he won the 200m IM last night: Phelps was really tired. And, after Serbia’s Milorad Čavić swam impressively in the semifinal, you knew this race wasn’t going to be a walk in the park for Mr. Phelps. And as the swimmers churned their way down the first 50m you could see Phelps was not going to dominate this race as he had in the past. In fact, Phelps touched the wall seventh after the first 50, behind both Čavić and fellow American Ian Crocker. You knew Phelps was going to make a push, but as he reached the 75m mark he was still trailing Čavić. He made his move and was matching Čavić stroke for stroke as it came down to the final few meters. As the swimmers reached the wall it Čavić chose to cruise into the wall, while Phelps took one extra half stroke and used his 6′ 8″ wingspan to touch the wall just before the Serbian. The race couldn’t have been closer. Phelps won by one-hundredth of a second. A poor start, bad kick off the wall at 50m, or one weak stroke would have cost Phelps the gold and cost him a shot at the coveted eight gold medals he is going for. Now, Phelps will go for medal number eight tomorrow night (ET) in the 4x100m medley relay, a race the U.S. has never lost when competing (Australia took the gold at the 1980 Summer games in Moscow, which the U.S. boycotted).

To be honest, Milorad Čavić should have won that race. The fact that he had led the greatest Olympic champion for that long and then faltered at the last second (make that the last one-hundredth of a second) is stunning. It also shows just how amazing Phelps is, being able to come back from almost last place to win in such a short race. Where Čavić faltered is, as expected, the last push to the wall. It seemed as though he thought the wall was closer than it was as he reached out a bit too soon and tried to glide through the water to touch first. Phelps on the other hand took one more half stroke as he neared the wall, and instead of being in the water most of his upper body was in the air, once again proving you move faster through the air than through water. Looking at replays it does seem as though Čavić touches first, but the Omega touch-pad system begged to differ. Of course, the Čavić’s couch filed the obligatory protest but to no avail. Overhead cameras proved Phelps touched first, albeit by the slimmest of margins, and was the gold medalist. As Mark Spitz just said, “It was epic for the whole world to see how great you really are.” Phelps truly is great. Great. Inspiring. Inhuman. Whatever adjective you choose to describe Phelps, know this. He is the greatest Olympian of all time and is doing something that you may never see for another 30 years.

–A final note stems from a conversation I was having with my dad after Phelps’ epic race. My father proposed that instead of just relying on the touch-pad clock, a light should go on whenever a swimmer touches the pad. Therefore, there would be no question who the winner is. All you would have to do is look at the overhead shot and see which lane lights up first. The brains behind the touch-pad system (which has truly changed swimming) may have thought of this already and shot down the idea for whatever reason, but if they haven’t they should. And if they ever do, remember you heard it here first.