NBC Olympic swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines is a three-time gold medalist – but when he shook Michael Phelps’ hand this week he felt like a teeny-bopper meeting Justin Timberlake.
“I had goose bumps,” Gaines said. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘What the heck am I doing?’ I have never felt this way about a swimmer before. It was like, ‘Gosh, I must be nuts.’ ”
Phelps, 19, will swim for history over the next couple of weeks. He will attempt to win eight gold medals, which would break Mark Spitz’s 1972 Olympic record of seven in one Olympiad.
Will he do it?
“Boy, you put me on the spot,” Gaines said. “I hope he does it because it will help the sport of swimming, just like Mark did in ’72. But I don’t think it is possible because he has a train wreck of events that he is so far behind in
that I just don’t think he can make up that much time from the trials to the Olympics. I think he can win five gold medals.”
The “train wrecks” are the 800-meter freestyle relay in which Phelps must rely on three other swimmers. In 2000, the Americans lost by five seconds – which is a lot – to the Australians, who did have home-pool advantage.
The 200 freestyle is “probably the race of the century,” Gaines said, because you have the five fastest swimmers in the history of that event, including world-record holder Ian Thorpe.
In the 100 butterfly, American and world-record holder Ian Crocker is in the way. In that race, Phelps is a half-second slower, which is an “eternity” in swimming.
“My prediction is five golds, a couple of silvers and a bronze,” said Gaines, who correctly emphasized that if he is right it should no way be looked as some sort of failure.
Phelps’ greatest success may not be in Greece. By the next Summer Games, he will be a prime-swimming age, 23. With two Olympics under his swim cap – he finished fifth in the 200 butterfly as a 15-year-old in Sydney – Gaines thinks Phelps will be able to beat Spitz in Bejing.
“In 2008, if he stays healthy and still has the drive, he will win eight gold medals,” Gaines said.
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