Olympics: Phelps Looks to London As a Route to Swimming Fun

In the end even the history-maker was impressed by what he had done. Eight gold medals around his neck, the expectations of the watching world fulfilled, Michael Phelps finally escaped his own reserve and, like a little boy lost in his achievement, he shed a tear. It was a small one, no doubt, but then this giant of an Olympian has shown over eight days in Beijing that he is at his best when dealing in the tiniest of fractions - 2.32, 0.08, 1.89, 0.67, 5.14, 2.29 and 0.01 - to be precise.

Add together these winning margins of Phelps' eight gold medal performances and it comes to 12.4 seconds; the time it has taken to read this far into this story. Such is the difference between the mundane and the magnificent, between those destined for the footnotes and those who write the history.

Will anyone remember the names of those who won silver? The question is not meant to demean the achievements of the talented athletes who trailed in Phelps' wake but an attempt to convey the scale of his achievement. At a meet involving hundreds of swimmers he is king.

In a village of 10,000 athletes he is God. After 112 years of the modern Olympic movement he is The One, the only man to win eight gold medals at a single Games.

The last of them came when he helped the US team to win the men's 4x100m individual medley, a victory that carried Phelps past the record of his compatriot Mark Spitz, who won seven golds at Munich in 1972. "We are all proud to be a part of something as special as this," said the free styler Jason Lezak, who was handed a lead for the final 100m after Phelps had overhauled the Japanese and Australian quartets in the butterfly leg.

"This is all a dream," said Phelps. "I just saw my mom and my sister and we all had a little cry together."

Yet if his team-mates were quick to eulogise and the man himself sought refuge in the arms of his family, it took the Australian swimmer Leisel Jones to capture fully what the world had just witnessed.

Asked what was her biggest thrill of the 2008 Olympic Games, she was in no doubt: "To be here in Beijing when Michael Phelps won his eight gold medals" - this from a woman who had just won two of her own.

And it is not just in Beijing that Phelps has stopped the clocks. Across the United States he has turned a nation obsessed with baseball into a nation obsessed with events at China's National Aquatics Center. Saloon bar televisions have been tuned to nothing else. Even play at Yankee Stadium in New York has been interrupted for announcements on his progress. Suffice to say, he gave them all quite a show.

Of course, none of his eight victories could sensibly be called routine but six could be described as being comfortable. The remaining two - in the 4x100m relay and 100m butterfly - were searing in their intensity as they reached their heart-stopping climax. Even now there are some who believe that Serbia's Milorad Cavic was robbed when the clock showed him finishing one-hundredth of a second behind the American in Saturday's 100m butterfly final. Let the conspiracists chatter while the rest can be satisfied by underwater photographs showing Phelps' fingers pressed firmly against the finishing wall as Cavic's fall graspingly short.

A minor star when he left for Beijing earlier this month, the 23-year-old will return to the States as a superstar. Some might fear for a young man in such circumstances but they need fear nothing when it comes to Phelps, because what made him unstoppable in the Aquatics Center is what will protect him from the sharks now circling his life and career. "He is a nice guy, a good bloke," said the two-time Olympic champion Grant Hackett of Australia. "Over the last few years I have seen him a lot and he hasn't changed one bit. That is a good thing, believe me."

Few who had watched Phelps comport himself with quiet dignity as history beckoned would doubt Hackett's words, just as few would doubt that we have not seen the last of him.

After four years preparing for Beijing he will now take a short holiday before heading home to Baltimore to "hang out" with friends. No doubt there will be television appearances and more sponsorship deals but, when all is said and done, he remains an athlete. And an ambitious one at that.

"Bob, my coach, wants to start afresh. He wants us to try things we have never tried before," he said when asked what his plans were for London 2012. "It should be a fun four years."

That is for him and for us.

Pool of gold

16 medals at two Games

100m butterfly Gold 2008 and 2004

200m butterfly Gold 2008 and 2004

200m individual medley

Gold 2008 and 2004

400m individual medley

Gold 2008 and 2004

4x100m medley Gold 2008 and 2004

4x200m freestyle

Gold 2008 and 2004

200m freestyle

Gold 2oo8, bronze 2004

4x100m freestyle

Gold 2008, bronze 2004