Phelps and the Eight Golds

Chasing a 36-year-old record

At the 1972 Munich Games, American swimmer Mark Spitz won seven gold medals, a record for a single Olympics. Michael Phelps had tried to match it in Athens in 2004 and came away with six golds and two bronzes. Four years later in Beijing he entered eight events again.

He swam in the Water Cube, a new pool built for the Games that many experts expected to be fast. Most events also had heats or semi-finals, so the week meant a long run of races.

Help from a teammate

The second gold nearly slipped away. In the 4x100 metres freestyle relay, American anchor Jason Lezak dived in more than half a body length behind France. He chased down Alain Bernard over the last length and touched first by eight hundredths of a second.

In the 200 metres butterfly, Phelps's goggles filled with water and he said he could barely see during the last 100 metres. He won anyway, in a world record time.

One hundredth of a second

The seventh gold, in the 100 metres butterfly, was the closest of all. Serbia's Milorad Cavic seemed ahead as the swimmers reached the wall, but the timing showed Phelps 50.58 and Cavic 50.59. Officials studied images shot thousands of times a second and confirmed the result.

The next day the United States won the 4x100 metres medley relay in world record time, with Phelps swimming the butterfly leg. That made eight golds from eight events, and seven of the eight came with world records.

The most decorated Olympian

Phelps went on to swim at the 2012 and 2016 Games as well. He retired with 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold, both all-time records.

Beijing is the peak of that career. It needed talent, years of training and a little luck on the relays, and it showed how much a team can lift one athlete toward something that seemed out of reach.

The body of a swimmer

Phelps had a body well suited to swimming, but talent alone does not explain eight wins in just over a week. He trained for years with coach Bob Bowman, swimming huge distances and practising race routines until they were automatic.

His habit of staying calm when things went wrong, like the goggles filling with water, became part of his legend.

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