Phelpsian Feat

August 18th, 2008

I was refraining from writing an entry  on Michael Phelps, but I’m out of ideas. For a whole week, I’ve followed every race that Phelps swam, except for the 400IM that I missed. Bob Costas was right when he said that Michael Phelps as the greatest athlete is subjective. I’ll try to be objective.

Firstly, let’s concentrate within the sport of swimming. Compared to 36 years ago when Mark Spitz recorded 7 gold medals all in world record time, the swimmers were using regular swimming trunks and did not have modern training facility. Thirty-six years later, Michael Phelps broke Spitz record by winning 8 golds and 7 of which in world record time. Phelps was sporting high tech suits and trained in a modern training facility. So does that give Spitz the handicap? I don’t think so. Every competitors that Phelps faced were wearing the same suits and were trained in the same modern training facility. The competitiveness is not lost, as a matter of fact, it’s intact and more competitive. Again, there’s an issue with enhancement drugs (not illegal, yet). Hypothetically speaking, if Phelps is taking enhancement drugs that are not yet considered illegal, Spitz may also have been using an enhancement drug that wasn’t tested back then and testing wasn’t predominant in the 60s. I still agree with Spitz, that you can’t compare the two feats one-on-one, but Phelps has the upper hand and is to be considered the greatest swimmer.

Another issue is that back then, there weren’t that many events that Spitz could have joined. That’s beside the point. If Spitz joined 10 events, if Phelps really has put into mind breaking that record, he would have joined 11 events. Also, Spitz didn’t swim all four strokes; Phelps does.

Now comes the all sport comparison. It really is incomparable because swimming is an individual sport and sports like basketball is a team sport. However, I’m not far from the truth when I say that swimming takes a lot more effort than dribbling and shooting a basketball. There is the element of water which is a variable. You have little to no control over what water can do. Other sports does not have that variable to consider.

In conclusion, I know Phelps won’t be having the same program next Olympics, but I hope he joins the 1500m Freestyle race. If he gets a gold there, that’ll put a period in everything. Also, it’ll take a few Olympic meet before someone actually breaks his record. Maybe the 14 golds is easy to break, but the 8 gold in a single Olympic is a hard feat. The Phelpsian feat according to Aaron Peirsol.

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Entry Filed under: Health & Fitness