Michael Phelps is playing with house money

A friend of mine wrote this on Facebook the other night:

In 2008 everyone was rooting for Michael Phelps because he was Superman. The reason why his 2012 story intrigues me is because despite still being fantastic, in some events he's not a guarantee.

What I find intriguing about Phelps this year is that, assuming this is his last Olympics at age 27, he's on the greatest victory lap ever, and, as crazy as this may seem, I don't think we fully appreciate what he did in Beijing.

London is a victory lap for Phelps because even if he gets left in the blocks in every race (and he won't, since he's still one of the best swimmers in the world, if not the best, so he will likely win at least some gold medals), he's in the history books. For most Olympic athletes except maybe hockey, basketball or tennis players, and maybe some boxers depending on what happens afterward, one gold medal is the pinnacle.

Phelps has 14, plus a couple bronze medals. Eight of those were in Beijing. The only number he has to beat is Larissa Latynina's 18 total medals.

But we know the numbers. We saw the races in 2008, a couple in particular.




Yet the thing I don't think we fully appreciate is the circumstance under which he did it, namely that he accomplished the impossible ... when he was supposed to.

Mark Spitz's seven gold medals in 1972 was the unreachable star. Matt Biondi made a run at it in 1988, but his of his seven medals, "only" five were gold, and Phelps won six golds and two bronzes in 2004.

So Phelps came to Beijing with a career that would have been the envy of 99.99 percent of athletes who ever took part in the Olympics, and if he had done the exact same thing, it would have been a disappointment. At a minimum, he had to equal Spitz, and that would have probably been a letdown, especially if the race he didn't win came early. (Of the two races above, I believe the relay was his second gold, and the butterfly was his seventh.)

After weeks if not months of hype beforehand, NBC's prime-time lineup for the first week of the Olympics was an eight-part drama called "Can Michael Phelps Do It?" We came back every night for the latest in the series, live finals in East Coast prime time thanks to a convenient 12-hour time difference between New York and Beijing that and a schedule switch that put the finals in the morning Beijing time.

The only way it would work was for Phelps to run the table, and while making NBC happy wasn't his motivation, don't think he didn't know what the expectations were.

And he pulled it off.

Phelps is probably going to race another eight events in London, and while he'll get a lot of attention, it won't be the same. How can it be? It can't be "Watch Michael Phelps try to do the impossible ... a second time."

We saw him do that four years ago. This year, let's just watch and appreciate and understand we may never see anyone like him again.