How is it that Phelps always wins?
Posted: Sunday, August 10, 2008 3:46 AM
For all practical purposes, Ryan Lochte and Laszlo Cseh are just as fast as Michael Phelps. Put any of them in a pool near you and he would be the fastest and most graceful mammal you’ve seen in any water this side of Sea World. Put them all in together, and they’re separated by absurdly small bits of time.
And yet when they get together, Phelps always wins. That doesn’t mean he wins most of the time or nine times out of 10 or 99 times out of 100. He always wins.
It may be by less than half a second, the margin of victory over Lochte in the U.S. Olympic Trials, or almost 2½ seconds, as it was Sunday in the final of the 4x100 individual medley. But whether the margin be great or small, old Phelps always wins.
It’s one of the great mysteries in sports, and it shows up only in the events that test speed above all other factors. Tiger Woods is as great at his sport as Phelps is at his, but Tiger doesn’t win all the time. For Tiger, it’s closer to 30 percent over his career and 40 percent during his hottest years. That’s phenomenal for a notoriously capricious sport, but it’s a long way from every time.
During his prime, Roger Federer won almost all the time. But he lost matches, sometimes on surfaces other than clay. It was the same for Martina Navratilova, who once won more than 80 straight matches. But she didn’t win them all, not even for a single year.
Even Phelps doesn’t win every race he swims in. Four years ago in the Athens Games, he finished third in the 200-meter freestyle to Ian Thorpe. But in his specialties, he simply wins.
There have been other swimmers who have dominated like that in a given specialty. And some sprinters on the track have also gone long periods without losing. Edwin Moses went years without losing the 400 hurdles, and Michael Johnson dominated the 400 sprint for years, too. Carl Lewis for a time couldn’t be beaten, either.
It doesn’t make logical sense. Everybody has a down day sooner or later. Everybody can be taken by someone who runs the race of his or her life. That’s life as all of us know it. But life’s rules don’t apply to these guys.
Hundredths of a second are ridiculously tiny distances. In the sprints on the track, it comes down to inches. In the pool, it’s not much more.
So again I ask, why, even on his worst day, does Phelps still get to the wall an inch ahead of anyone else on his best day?
Whatever the reason, that’s the measure of true greatness. To go back to my original statement, these folks are all essentially as even as even can be. There’s just a hair or two difference among the bunch. But when you split that hair, the fat half is always on Phelps’ head.
I don’t care if he breaks Mark Spitz’s ancient record of seven gold medals in one Olympics. Spitz didn’t have to swim against people nearly as talented as the folks Phelps is facing. In Spitz’s day, swimming was limited to a handful of countries. Now, champions come from everywhere. Yet Phelps has been dominating his sport for more than four years. And in certain races, he never loses.
Eight gold medals would be wonderful, but a couple of those depend on the strength of teams in relays. He has little control over those races. He’s already the greatest ever. Because he always wins.
