(The author, features writer for Sports Illustrated's Chinese-language edition published in Beijing)
If you're from China it may have taken you a little while to realize that the Olympic athlete most of the American media is paying attention to here isn't named Yao Ming or Liu Xiang.
He's not a basketball athlete or a track and field guy. Yes, the Redeem Team, as Americans call the men's basketball team, is a certifiably big deal, and the United States has a potential 100-meter gold medal winner in Tyson Gay. But the biggest athlete in the Olympics, as far as the United States sports media is concerned, is a swimmer by the name of Michael Phelps. And there's a reason.
If he's everything he's advertised to be, he is simply the greatest swimmer of all time.
Writing about athletes competing in sports in which an athlete can gain an obvious advantage by doping always gives me pause. Hero-making is a temptation everywhere and many athletes fall into the temptation of doping in order to win medals, money and acclaim. Marion Jones' fall from grace was stunning to witness, and the BALCO doping scandal in the United States has cast a pall over track and field from which it will take a long time to recover.
But everything I've heard from my colleagues at Sports Illustrated who have known Phelps for years say that his performances are "on the curve" – plausible given the amount by which he has improved his times year to year. He's also the most competitive guy around (you do not want to play this guy in a game of cards, let alone get in a pool next to him). He wants to legitimately challenge himself. So he's set himself a huge goal: eight gold medals, which would eclipse the record seven gold medals in a single Games that American Mark Spitz won in the 1972 Olympics.
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US swimmer Michael Phelps reacts after the men's 4 x 100m medley relay swimming final at the National Aquatics Center during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in Beijing on August 17, 2008. Michael Phelps became the first man to win eight gold medals at the same Olympics when the US won the men's 4x100m medley relay final in a new world record time. [Agencies]
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Phelps graced the cover of Sports Illustrated's Olympic preview issue in the United States because he is the single most recognizable American Olympian competing here. As of this writing, he's five gold medals into his quest.
While many in the Western press decry the Chinese sports school system and its apparent win-at-all-costs formula, we sometimes forget that in the West, we kind of like those medals too. Phelps symbolizes a lot to Americans: individual achievement, legendary excellence, sporting prowess and perhaps even a bit of nationalism. This is the first Olympics in quite a while where the United States is being legitimately challenged in the gold-medal race, and China has clearly won that battle in the first week. So Phelps' quest becomes a quest that Americans can relate to: can he bring home the gold – and do his part to bring home the gold-medal count too?
He's already brought home plenty of gold for himself; at 23 he's already a multimillionaire. That US$1 million bonus being offered by sponsor Speedo for the eight golds would be more symbolic than life-changing.
But what's going on this week at the Water Cube is historic because Phelps is so far ahead of his contemporaries that he makes every individual race a clinic. (The relays are another story; it took every ounce of teammate Jason Lezak's energy to overtake his French competitor in the final leg of the men's 4x100-meter freestyle relay on August 10.) As SI Olympics expert Brian Cazeneuve says, it is a moment fraught with history.
"Whatever the standard is fifty years from now, it's going to be better than today," he says. "But it's going to be better across the board. Michael Phelps [being so much better] relative to the rest of the people swimming today is something we may never see again."
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