It was so surreal to be Michael Phelps here, to listen to people debate whether he is the greatest athlete in Olympic history after he passed a group that included the runners Carl Lewis and Paavo Nurmi to become the one with the most gold medals.
Phelps is a self-described klutz, a real fish out of water on land, and he has a surgical scar on his right wrist to prove it.
In October he took a nasty stumble that imperiled his pursuit of Mark Spitz's single Games record of seven gold medals. Phelps, 23, slipped on a patch of ice and fell while climbing into a friend's car in Michigan and broke his right wrist.
It made for a tough start to the training cycle that carried him through these Beijing Games, but the climax was perfect. On Sunday morning, Phelps swam the butterfly leg on the 4x100-meter U.S. medley relay that held off Australia in a world record-setting victory, giving Phelps his eighth gold medal of these Games and his 14th over all.
"I wanted to do something nobody ever did," Phelps said. "This goes hand in hand with my goal of changing swimming."
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