Listening to the Olympic commentators makes me cringe sometimes. Some of these cretins are convinced Usain Bolt is a greater Olympian than Phelps.
No Way----NO FRIGGIN' WAY!!!!
=> Michael has won more total golds and total medals over a longer period of time He Owned the pool in Beijing. Bolt dominated two individual and one relay over two Olympiads.
=> Michael's career has lasted much longer than Bolt's.
=> Michael probably has the aerobic capacity of 3 Bolts put together.
=> Bolt is all fast-twitch fibers - honed to perfection for sure but I'd love to see him try to run a 400 or 800m.Michael is fast and slow twitch fibers.
Michael Wilbon says it's a tie.
espn.go.com/.../2012-olympics-usain-bolt-michael-phelps-share-olympic-mountaintop
Bruce Jenner Kardashian(aka Olympic Gold medal Decathlete) said that Bolt is delusional and so is Wilbon. Bolt just does the sprints. Heck, Carl Lewis did the sprints and the long jump. Phelps is on the mountaintop alone.
Maybe medals are not the ultimate measure because in a lot of sports, you can only win one medal per Olympics (although isn't anyone free to train for and compete in as many different events as they feel up to? This is essentially what Phelps did. Just because they were all swimming events doesn't make it easy.)
Bolt is impressive for sure - an epic hero of a runner. But for me, Phelps was the Presiding Deity of the 2008 and 2012 Olympics - a completely unique and astounding phenomenon. Although it should probably be noted that His Phelpsness is not a singular, but a triune phenomenon: The Mother, The Son, and The Holy Coach!!!:angel:
Right now on their front page they have a list of the all-time top medal winners:
Top Medal Winners — Athletes
Athlete.................Country, Sport, Total
---------------------------------------
Michael Phelps............ USA, SWI, 22
Larysa Latynina.......... URS, GYM, 18
Nikolay Andrianov....... URS, GYM, 15
Borys Shakhlin........... URS, GYM, 13
Edoardo Mangiarotti.... ITA, FEN, 13
Takashi Ono.............. JPN, GYM, 13
Paavo Nurmi.............. FIN, ATH, 12
Bjørn Dæhlie.............. NOR, CCS, 12
Birgit Fischer-Schmidt.. GDR/GER, CAN, 12
Sawao Kato............... JPN, GYM, 12
Jenny Thompson......... USA, SWI, 12
Dara Torres............... USA, SWI, 12
Aleksey Nemov........... RUS, GYM, 12
Natalie Coughlin.......... USA, SWI, 12
What I find interesting about this list is that only one athlete mentioned competed in the winter Olympics.
I know. I looked at the WR progression for the 100 meter dash and in the past 25 years or so its been staggering.
1936 - Jessie Owens - 10.2
1988 - Carl Lewis - 9.92, 52 years later and only ~.28 faster.
2009 - Usain Bolt - 9.58, 21 years later and .34 seconds faster.
The athletics US women's 4x100 world record might be the most suspicious based on % under the old world record. They broke a 27 year old world record in a 40 second race by 0.55 seconds. The old record was questionable itself as it set by East Germany in 1985.
Just read the blog post mentioned above on Terry Laughlin's Total Immersion site. Very interesting summary of Phelps' career. Thanks for that SolarEnergy.
He set his first world record at 15?! And then set 10 more just during the next 2 years?!
Wow.
Bold Talkin' Bolt can proclaim himself as legendary as he likes, but again, I am much more blown away by The Phelps Phenomenon.
Really hard to compare this two, any comparison has to be based on subjective criteria, since the medal count doesn't mean much.
One thing is sure in my mind though, it's very hard to commit to a swim training program.
Terry Laughlin has recently created a great blog entry, which could help some of us better understanding what your typical super star swimmer must go through.
www.swimwellblog.com/.../
So whilst it may be that Bolt, objectively speaking (if this is even possible) be a greater athlete than Phelps, I can't help thinking that the latter went through very very difficult times in order to achieve what he did.
