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What title can you give a Michael Phelps story that isn’t already taken?

Image taken from Google Images and photoshopped by me in photoshop.com/express

As the swimming events wrapped up at the Beijing Olympics yesterday spectators can say they truly witnessed history in the making. And it came in the shape of Michael Phelps. He is the man everyone is talking about at the moment and I will be no different on this here Spiderblog. Firstly I’d like to say I have find myself defending him time and time again. It seems Aussies have a serious problem giving credit where credit is due, especially to American athletes. (Yes, we wish he was one of us but he’s not!). As I’ve been telling his detractors, what Phelps has done is nothing short of extraordinary. Even the best swimmers at the peak of their careers have faced great upsets (case in point: Ian Thorpe in the 200m Freestyle in Sydney and half of our female swimteam at these Olympics bar Stephanie Rice) but not Phelps. With all the pressure in the world, he backed up and won race after race and smashed several world records to boot. It’s more than pure athleticism that drives him. It’s an unmatched will to win. Nerves of steel. And plenty of heart.

So eight gold medals later, the debate of the moment is: ‘Is Michael Phelps the greatest Olympian of them all?’, as The Australian asks. (As do the San Diego Union Tribune and the Washington Times). The Canberra Times doesn’t even need to ask the question. But the UK’s Times Online is not quite as sure. This is where I play devil’s advocate: Do number of medals determine an athlete’s sporting greatness? Is that like determining who the greatest businessman is by the amount of money they’ve earned? Yes, the figures certainly speak for themselves but they can’t be the be all and end all of greatness.

I think Phelps is the greatest swimmer of all time. Swimmers have had over 100 years to do what he’s done; compete in all those events, win all those gold medals and break all those world records but he stands alone on top of that mountain. Where it gets tricky is pinning him against athletes from other sports. Swimming has more medals accessible to its competitors than any other event at the Olympics, albeit they are certainly not easy to obtain. Take someone like Usain Bolt, for example, who’s win in the 100m sprint is possibly the best thing I’ve ever seen. He only took up the event one year ago and he’s trained in his native Jamaica, turning down American University scholarships. He is sure to take out the 200m as well and spearhead Jamaica to a win in the 100m relay. As a sprinter his medal chances are limited, but if he were to end his Olympic campaign with all three gold medals, I think he is worthy of rivalling Phelps as the athlete of the tournament.

The 10,000m also grabbed my attention last night with Ethopia’s Kenenisa Bekele successfully defending his Olympic title. The event is arguably the hardest in athletics, with the best on show not only overlapping some of their competitors but sprinting to the end as fit as they were when they started the race. Bekele has only been upstaged by compatriot Haile Gebrselassie, who is also a duel winner of the 10,000m at 1996 and 2000 Olympics and has won everything from 1,500m events to marathons in the past. (Unfortunately he pulled out of the Beijing marathon due to the smog). So I guess to round up my point, how would you compare someone like Gebrselassie with Phelps? The former isn’t exactly a marketable athlete of Phelps’ stature but he’s certainly a legend in his own right. Then you have the Larissa Semyonovna Latynina’s, the Carl Lewis’, the Nadia Comaneci’s, the Jesse Owen’s and so on. If Phelps can come back in London 2012 and do it all again, well then, I guess, there would be no doubt.