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THE YEAR IN REVIEW: SWIMMING : Phelps puts spotlight on the water
Michael Phelps won seven of his eight gold medals in world-record time.
LOS ANGELES: American Michael Phelps emerged from the Olympic pool at Beijing's Water Cube dripping with gold and glory, his eight victories setting a new standard for swimming supremacy in 2008.
Phelps wearing the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit.
It was a feat many believed couldn't be done, and Phelps did it in emphatic style.
Seven of Phelps's eight gold were won in world-record time. The only exception was the 100m butterfly, won in a personal best of 50.58 seconds that was a breathtaking one one-hundredth of a second in front of Serbian Milorad Cavic.
Phelps surpassed fellow swimmer Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven gold medals at one Games.
He also scaled the summit of Olympic achievement, matching and then surging past the record nine career gold medals of Games icons Spitz, Paavo Nurmi, Carl Lewis and Larysa Latynina.
But it remains to be seen if Phelps's larger dream, of permanently redrawing the sports landscape to give swimming a prominent place in the foreground, will be realised.
Certainly for nine days of competition in Beijing, Phelps made swimming the star turn. If the memories fade for casual fans, they will no doubt continue to inspire his rivals.
"It definitely stretches out the barriers," said Australian swimmer Libby Trickett, who left Beijing with four medals, including two gold.
"It makes the impossible possible and decreases the limitations that we put on ourselves."
Phelps had opened the swimming competition with a victory in the first event, the 400m individual medley, and went on to win the 200m medley, 100m and 200m butterfly, 200m freestyle and both the 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relays.
He had a narrow escape in the 4x100m freestyle relay. Phelps led off the U.S. challenge with a personal best time, but anchor Jason Lezak trailed French sprint star Alain Bernard at the final turn and only sealed the win by a fingertip.
At the age of 23, Phelps has set a record for the total number of medals won by a male Olympian with 16, including the six gold and two bronze he won in Athens in 2004.
Phelps reigned over an Olympic swimming competition that saw a host of countries mine gold amid a wave of world records that had been foreshadowed earlier in the season with the arrival of the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit.
The men's 100m freestyle world record fell three times at the Games as Australian Eamon Sullivan and France's Alain Bernard battled for sprint supremacy -- Sullivan emerging with the world record but Bernard capturing the all-important 50m freestyle gold that denied Dutch great Pieter van den Hoogenband an unprecedented third straight Olympic title in the prestigious event.
Rebecca Adlington, 19, became the first British woman since 1960 to capture Olympic swimming gold with a razor-thin victory over American Katie Hoff in the 400m free -- then smashed the oldest record on swimming's books with a convincing triumph in the 800m freestyle.
Stephanie Rice won three gold with three world records, her 200m and 400m individual medley double and share in Australia's 4x200m freestyle relay triumph accounting for half of Australia's six gold -- all won by women.
U.S. men's swimming coach Eddie Reese called the Beijing Games "the fastest, deepest, most incredible Olympics there has ever been.
"There were so many people from all the countries going fast. The number of gold medals were spread all over the world, and the silver medals and bronze medals also spread over the world.
"They weren't for slow times. It was an incredible experience."
The vast improvement in times were attributed to better training methods as well as technical improvements such as the space age swimsuits.
And although some in the sport were pushing world governing body Fina to limit technological changes, it appeared that there was to be more of the same coming in 2009, when revolutionary starting blocks were expected to send records tumbling again, probably in time for the world championships in Rome. -- AFP
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year of michael phelps
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Post time 24-12-2008 08:53 AM
Post time 24-12-2008 09:15 AM
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