Bullet of Baltimore

Winning isn’t everything. To Phelps, heck NO…winning is the only thing he focuses in the pool. That’s why he swept all 8 gold medals in all events he participated at Beijing Olympic and be the only swimmer that ever won 8 gold medals in a single Olympic game vanishing  Mark Spitz record of 7 gold medals in 1972 Summer Olympic. Not just that, he has won 14 career Olympic gold medals, the most that ever won by any Olympian to date. In his early appearance, he was the youngest swimmer to set a world record when he was 15 years 9 months. Just amazing. Having physical advantage with 6’7” wingspan, 3” longer than his own height help him with extraordinary reach. I think that’s how he beat Milorad Cavic in 100m butterfly in Beijing despite his quickness on the last stroke which was half stroke earlier than Cavic’s. Imagine, 0.01 of a sec determined who won the shining gold. Cavic must be really pissed off with that result. I mean, 1/100 sec…huh. Very2 tight race.

In Beijing, it was a miracle. I still remember how the US 4x100m freestyle relay team outran the Fantastic Four of French. But Phelps wasn’t the man. The hero that helped Phelps to win another gold was Jason Lezak. On that relay, Lezak really nailed it that he set the fastest split time in history to beat Frenchman Alain Bernard by 0.08 sec. Again, it was astonishing and I thought that was one of the greatest comebacks I’ve ever seen. What heat up the competition was because the French has been talking too much about beating the American in that relay final. They were very confident that they could beat the Americans who were getting more hype during the game.  It was a breathtaking performance by Lezak and of course without him, Phelps couldn’t have dreamt to pursue his ultimate goal.

Phelps and mates have proven that everything is possible by setting their preliminary goals. To realize the goals is to dream about it, dream as it was real, and then work on it…harder and harder until you reach your limit and then go beyond the limit and that’s where you would reach greatness. To know if you’re capable to do so is to try, and then you’ll know where you stand. When you know where you stand, you’ll start dreaming of reaching higher, later you’ll learn how to jump to reach a higher spot. That’s how it works. Life ain’t easy.