Cherish What We are Witnessing
Every day for the past week I have made my best efforts to
avoid twitter, ESPN, and any sort of social medium that would spoil the
primetime Olympic results for me. Well, I have pretty much failed everyday.
I didn’t get home from work until late last night, and even
though I already knew the results to most of the major primetime events and
because I am weird like that, I still stayed up to watch my recording, which
led me to this thought and column…
I remember being too young to appreciate what Michael Phelps
accomplished during the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, I remember watching ESPN and
seeing reports of his record-shattering swims. He won six gold medals and two
bronze medals in Athens, he set two world records and three Olympic records…at
the age of 19. I am 19. I work at a summer camp in the morning and bus tables
at night.
Let’s go to 2008 in Beijing. I remember thinking to myself:
“What the hell, it is only swimming but this guy is getting a lot of hype. May
break Mark Spitz record? I’ll tune in.” So the first event I watch is the
4x100-meter freestyle relay, Phelps 2nd event after already winning
gold in the 400-individual medley and shattering the world record by more than
two seconds. In the 4x100 free relay with Phelps swimming the opening leg,
Jason Lezak ran down the heavily favored French in the final 50 meters. Lezak
swam the fastest 100m relay split in Olympic history. The rest is history. That
swim was an omen. Something special was about to happen. Something magical.
Something inconceivable.
And it did. Phelps competed in 8 events, he won gold medals
in all of them, breaking Mark Spitz’ 32 year old record of 7 golds in a single
Olympic games. His 7th and record tying medal, was done in
miraculous fashion, out-touching Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by one one-hundredth of
a second. Seven of his eight golds were done so in record-breaking fashion. The
other was a new Olympic record. He did this at the age of 23.
After Beijing, Phelps celebrated, took some time off, and
downsized his intense training. Criticize his preparation all you want, condemn
his out-of-the-pool behavior all you want, what Michael Phelps is accomplishing
in London right now is still unbelievable. It’s mind blowing. Legendary.
Phelps failed to medal in his first event, the
400-individual medley, losing to fellow American Ryan Lochte. It was the first
time he failed to medal in an Olympic event since the age of 15, when he
finished 5th in the 2000 Sydney games. Since that swim, he has added
four more medals in four events, the third of which
surpassed the all time record for Olympic medals won, previously held by
Russian gymnast Larisa Latynina. The fourth of which was his 3rd
consecutive 200-individual medley Olympic gold. That too, has never been done
before. Phelps is scheduled to compete in two more finals, the 100-m butterfly
and the 4x100im relay. Gold medals are certainly realistic for both. Phelps has
said that this will be his last Olympics. If that is indeed true, when it is
all said and done, Phelps could and should end up with 22 Olympic medals, 16 of
which are already made of gold.
What Phelps has accomplished in the last decade of swimming
is one of the most astonishing, dominant athletic feats in the history of
sports. Phelps is to swimming and the Olympics as Ruth is to baseball, as
Jordan is to basketball, as Gretzky is to hockey. He captivated the entire
world in the greatest two-week spectacle of athletic achievement in Beijing,
and is now taking a victory lap in London. He is doing so training half as hard
as his competitors, and not nearly in his best shape. He has accomplished all
of this before his 28th birthday.
I wasn’t alive when Babe Ruth was hitting more home runs in
a single season than entire teams. I wasn’t old enough to understand Michael
Jordan’s dominance of professional basketball or Wayne Gretzky’s supremacy over
the National Hockey League. However, I am and will forever be proud to say I
witnessed a living legend, the most prestigious athlete of our time, and the
greatest Olympian who ever lived.
-Chris Collins
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