I have joined the Phelps party

By Joel Myhre (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, August 16, 2008

Clearly, the world is obsessed with Michael Phelps, and I have joined the party.

It’s hard not to have a “man-crush” on the guy who has already won six gold medals at the time of this writing (and hopefully seven by the time you read this). I have been willing to forego Twins’ games, good movies, news and sleep to watch the guy collect his golds and world records in what – and I’ll be honest here – hadn’t been the most exciting sport for me to watch.

However, all those swimming gurus out there who have defended their sport tooth-and-nail (for example, parents of high school swimmers calling the newspaper when they felt their sport was undercovered), I now am on your side. I’m interested in everything that goes on in the “water cube” in Bejing, even when Phelps isn’t swimming (though he seems to be swimming all the time.)

For example, it’s fascinating when the underwater camera shows Phelps dives two or three feet deeper than the other swimmers at the turn. Is it a trick they never thought of or poo-pooed? Or do they not have the sheer physical ability to go as deep as Phelps?

Additionally, how is it that Phelps looks like he’s swimming slower than his competitors? If you counted the number of times his arms make a stroke motion over the length of the 50-meter pool, he’d have to be on the lower end. Yet, he plows ahead of everyone else. His hands and feet are obviously displacing more water than those of his competitors.

Like everyone else, I’m fascinated with Phelps’ diet – 12,000 calories per day, including his breakfast of three fried-egg sandwiches, an omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast, three chocolate chip pancakes and two cups of coffee. I can compete with him on the coffee part, but that’s about it.

And that’s a good thing. The experts say someone who were to eat that much on a normal exercise schedule (that is, other than five hours per day in the pool), would gain five pounds per day.

Phelps obviously knows this. Let’s hope, after he’s done swimming, he decides to cut back, because his 185-pound body would balloon out to 315 in about a month.

I also have been enjoying the argument on whether Phelps is the “greatest athlete ever.” It’s basically a silly argument. Greatest swimmer in the history of the world? Hard to argue with that one. Greatest Olympic athlete? While some may make arguments, he has the most gold medals ever, and it sounds like he’s coming back for another Olympics in 2012. No matter who you put against him – from Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci to track star Carl Lewis – he’s going to stack up.

Greatest athlete ever? How many apples, oranges, bananas and peaches do you want to compare? Tiger Woods? Michael Jordan? Mohammed Ali? Phelps’ body is basically built like Aquaman’s (of the Superfriends fame). It’s questionable whether his body and abilities would fit another sport very well.

How about this statement: Phelps is as perfect of an athlete for the sport he chose than any athlete who has come along in the history of the world.

That’ll work for me.

Joel Myhre is The Journal’s general manager. E-mail him at joel.myhre@fergusfallsjournal.com