THERE is a week of competition remaining and yet, unless someone runs a 60-minute marathon or pole vaults clean out of the Bird’s Nest, you can consider nominations for the athlete of the Beijing Olympics well and truly closed. In almost every mind, eight will be enough to guarantee that Michael Phelps is not merely the greatest athlete of these Olympics, but a bona fide contender to be considered the greatest to have performed at Baron de Coubertin’s five-ringed circus.
In the newest event in Beijing - the race to put Phelps’s gobsmacking performance in context - the winner was the reporter from Finland who prefaced his question to Phelps with an observation that, in 112 years of the summer Olympics, his nation had not won a single gold medal. By the close of swimming business yesterday, Phelpsonia was in 12th place on the table of total medals won, ahead of more densely populated nations such as Spain and The Netherlands.
But before snapping up the $1.01 only the most generous bookmaker might offer on Phelps taking that unofficial athlete of the Games title, be aware that the field includes, in every sense, a bolter. Could it be possible that in 9.69 seconds Usain Bolt had achieved as much, even more, than Phelps had in the 27 minutes 30.8 seconds spread over seven days and 17 swims it took to win eight gold medals?
It is a proposition that would enrage those who prefer the scent of chlorine to Chanel No.5. As swimming devotees might rightly claim, Phelps’s feat of athleticism, stamina, discipline and, in the desperate closing stages of the 100-metres butterfly, sheer willpower, place him above the quibbling arguments of the nit-pickers.
Those of us who wonder if swimming gold is devalued by the amount of medals awarded for events that are not sufficiently distinct. Who believe the dearth of Olympic-sized pools in Tanzania and Nepal - and even London - severely reduces the competition, compared with that in track and field, where you need only flat earth.
Those of us who did not blink late on Saturday night and saw Bolt performing the most natural of human acts in the most astonishing manner, the Jamaican blur consigning any of Phelps’s swims - as opposed to his collective feat - to the furthest recesses of the mind. Safe to say, Bolt’s display of power will live in the memory long after the details of how the American’s medal haul was compiled are long forgotten and only the magic number eight remains.
Of course, to some, comparing Bolt’s sprint to Phelps’s grand haul might be like comparing a century in a Twenty20 match to a series of match-winning tons over the course of an Ashes series. That other swimmers such as Leisel Jones, left fatigued and emotional after far lighter schedules, said their lasting memory of Beijing would be Phelps’s medals, not their own, gives another indication of what Phelps achieved with his bloody-minded will to win.
On the other hand, it was the extraordinary ease of Bolt’s run that left mouths agape. As he hit the line, and his body turned almost sideways in the celebration that began 20 metres from the line, the mental calculations began. Would he have clocked 9.65? 9.60? Even faster if he had kept his head down?
Bolt’s wild celebration, something that might have seemed arrogant from another competitor, was distinctly different to Phelps’s usually more subdued response. After his narrow victory in the 100 metres butterfly, Phelps slapped the water and yelped with relief, but even after breaking Mark Spitz’s record yesterday he remained tight, controlled - as he has had to be.
Both Phelps and Bolt experienced a significant wardrobe malfunction, Phelps swam the last two laps of the 200 butterfly blind because his goggles had filled with water. Bolt raced down the track with a shoelace untied. Maybe if he had fallen and still won gold, we could make a stronger case for the Jamaican.
If Bolt wins the 200 metres - a race in which he must start firm favourite given that, as he darted around the track to celebrate his victory, he almost broke that world record, too - and Jamaica takes the 4 x 100 metres relay, he will have three gold medals. Athletics snobs, for whom track and field gold is stronger than the Euro, will argue that trumps eight in the pool.
But, as it is, Phelps will be acclaimed the athlete of these Olympics. Even if Bolt has provided the greatest single moment.
