And on the eighth day, the gods of swimming rested: the Baltimore Bullet by way of thanks to a US team that had propped up the most ambitious aquatic feat in Olympic history; the Thorpedo as the result of his Australian teammates’ failure to actually qualify for his last event, the medley relay final.
This has been the most extraordinary week in the lives of Michael Phelps and Ian Thorpe. While the American winner of five gold medals wears the crown as the most versatile multi-medalled swimmer in history, the Australian, who trounced Phelps in the Olympic pool’s “race of races”, the 200m freestyle, will leave Athens as the king of freestyle.
The question of who is the greatest remains as unanswerable as it was before the Games began. One thing is certain: Thorpe — who added two gold medals, a silver and a bronze to an Olympic treasury that started with three gold medals and a silver in Sydney 2000 — and Phelps provided a unique testament to human spirit and potential that will live long in the memory.
Phelps stood up in 17 races, excelled in all, was beaten in two, covered 3,300m of the pool, set one world and four Olympic records and his shot at Mark Spitz’s monument fell just shy of the seven gold medals that would have landed him a $1m bonus. Still, he won’t want for money now.
In America, they plan to count him in at eight medals overall — two bronze, five gold, plus, they hope, another gold in the 4x100 medley. On Friday night, after beating Ian Crocker by 0.04sec over the 100m butterfly, Phelps gave up his place in the medley relay final to his beaten teammate. He will still receive a medal for having raced in the heats if his team delivers. “We came into this meet as a team and we are going to leave it as a team. It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “This has been the most beautiful week of my life.”
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From day one of these Olympics, Phelps was burning to race. He initially had eight gold medals in his sights, and hoped to win at least two of them competing against Thorpe, the swimmer Americans most admire. Phelps began his mission on target with a gold medal and world record of 4min 08.26sec on the first day. He walked out onto a deck burning to race, large silver headphones strapped over his racing cap, Eminem’s Till I Collapse filling his ears. The lyrics go: “You gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength/And just pull that s*** out of you.”
Perhaps he should have lent his ipod to the US 4x100m freestyle relay team, who could only help to deliver a bronze behind an historic quartet from South Africa. There were gold medals over 200m medley and both butterfly races and the 4x200m freestyle relay throughout the week, but none compared to his bronze-medal effort in a fantasy final of big hitters over 200m freestyle behind Thorpe, world champion and record holder, Pieter van den Hoogenband, Dutch defending champion, and Australian Grant Hackett, third fastest ever.
On the third day of racing Phelps rose to his blocks again in accordance with the script for the battle billed as “the greatest freestyle race ever”. As a golden sun was setting over Athens and the tension of the moment crackled on a brisk wind that whipped into shape the national flags circling the pool, the gladiators rose to their blocks. At stake: Thorpe’s crown as king of freestyle kings and Phelps’s Spitzean dream: no gold medal, no magnificent seven, no $1 million bonus.
This would stretch Phelps beyond his limits and test the mettle of Van den Hoogenbad and Thorpe beyond the heights reached in their electric Sydney duel. Was it a race too far, Spitz had asked Phelps.
Phelps’s coach, Bob Bowman, had mapped out his protégé’s own path to gold on the atlas of Thorpe’s career: when the Australian broke the world record over 400m at 15 years of age, Bowman taped the race. He replayed it endlessly for his own pupil, beseeching him to copy the long, smooth power of Thorpe’s freestyle stroke.
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“I remember the first time I saw him on TV,” said Phelps. “He was so poised. The way he presented himself was incredible. I knew I wanted to handle myself just like that.”
Thorpe has always prided himself on his ability to be at one with his element. “Now what I’m trying to do is take that to another level,” he says, “where you actually use the water to your advantage.” That is what Phelps is still learning. With both men Beijing-bound in 2008, the best may be yet to come.