BEIJING — So you’ve always wanted to swim like Michael Phelps?
Well, now you have.
Phelps became the most prolific gold medalist in Olympic history Wednesday morning by winning a race with water filling his goggles.
The previous night, in a tiny darkened hotel pool wearing faded board shorts, I nearly splashed to the bottom with water filling my goggles.
When Phelps finished his laps — a world record in the 200-meter butterfly — he ripped off the goggles, threw them on the pool deck, and spent the next few minutes annoyingly squinting water out of his eyes.
Same here.
This is silly. This is beyond silly.
“This is miraculous,” said Poland’s Pawel Korzeniowski.
Michael Phelps cannot only win gold medals streaking through the fastest pool in the world, he can win them as if splashing around the YMCA.
He cannot only win them with biomemetic fabric on his body, he can win them with chlorine in his eyes.
He cannot only win them brutishly, he can win them blind.
And he can win them twice in one day, which is what happened Wednesday, which dredges up an entirely different set of metaphors.
At 10:21 a.m., he won a gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly.
At 11:19 a.m., he won another gold medal as part of the 800 freestyle relay.
That’s somebody pitching a no-hitter in Game 6 of the World Series, then hitting the game-winning grand slam of Game 7.
If the games were a doubleheader.
That’s somebody leading all scorers in games to win NBA and Olympic championships.
In the same afternoon.
He won the most coveted individual sports award in the world twice in less time that it would take most of us to even put on his bathing suit.
“Massively, massively impressive,” said Andrew Hunter of Great Britain.
It’s as large as 11 Olympic gold medals in his career, two more than anyone in any sort of Olympics, winter, spring, summer or fall.
But the only number that matters, it seems, is eight.
With five gold medals already around his neck here, can he survive the whiplash required to win three more, breaking legend Mark Spitz’s single-Olympic record?
Wednesday proved it. Wednesday clinched it.
The deal is done. Everyone around here with wet hair agrees.
“I think he wins eight medals, yes,” said Korzeniowski, who finished sixth in the 200 butterfly. “Everyone says, `How does he do this?’ But still, he does this.”
Hunter, who was part of Great Britain’s sixth-place relay team, shook his head.
“Everybody does their best against him and still, you don’t have a chance,” he said. “I don’t want this to be a bad omen but, yes, I think he wins the eight gold medals.”
To complete his mission, he has to win a 200 individual-medley race in which he is the world-record holder, a 100-butterfly race in which he has been faster than rival Ian Crocker all year, and a 400-medley relay race that the Americans have never lost in a non-boycotted Olympics.
He needs none of it, however, to win America. That’s been done already, Phelps capturing the country’s attention this week by being not only great, but goofy.
With his buzz haircut and oversized ears and crooked grin, he looks refreshingly like any other 23-year-old. Once on the pool deck, he acts like one.
When he came out of the water after winning the 200 butterfly Wednesday, he was shouting like a waterlogged kid who was yelling for his mother.
“I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t see a thing,” he shouted.
He later explained, saying, “I couldn’t see anything for the last 100, my goggles pretty much filled up with water. It just kept getting worse and worse through the race and I was having trouble seeing the walls, to be honest.”
Having trouble seeing the walls? Isn’t that something that happens during the Little Mermaid class?
“For the circumstances, I guess it’s not too bad,” Phelps said of his world-record 1:52:03.
Not too bad? Just ask New Zealand’s Moss Burmester, who led the race after one lap but then was swallowed up in Phelps’ tidal wave, finishing fourth.
“I went as fast as I could go, I was trying to hang on, but I just couldn’t hang on,” he said.
Nobody can. Not the other swimmers, and probably not even Mark Spitz.
After his first win, Phelps went from the pool to the medal stand to the pool, barely having time to dry off before jumping back in as the first leg of the 800 freestyle relay.
He gave the team a huge lead, and then he really got serious, climbing out of the water to pound the starting block and scream at his teammates as they finished five seconds in front of second-place Russia.
“It’s the funnest thing, being part of a team,” he said.
How can you not love a guy who uses the word “funnest?”
How can you not love a guy who, at the end of Thursday’s news conference, pulled out his Blackberry and read reporters what he considered an important text message from a high school friend.
“Dude, it’s ridiculous how many times I have to see your ugly face.”
Phelps smiled and read another text message from the same friend.
“It’s time to be the best ever.”
His eyes clear, he slowly nodded.
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