Patterico's Pontifications

8/15/2008

Phelps Wins 7th Gold Medal

Filed under: Sports — DRJ @ 7:16 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Did you see Phelps win the 100M fly by 1/100th of a second?

That was phenomenal.

— DRJ

15 Responses to “Phelps Wins 7th Gold Medal”

  1. But you know, those pants they wear. Talk about a “crack problem”. 😉

    nk (e69fdd)

  2. I admit I don’t understand the beauty of the Olympics. The global competition, the face to face rivalry… the strength and coordination for athletes to master their skill with no net and no second chance. It’s terrible, I know. 1/100th of a second is so similar to the guy who’s a hair slower, you need a precision timer just to determine the winner.

    It’s Olympic indifference… not too many people see it this way.

    Vermont Neighbor (a066ed)

  3. Phelps stands alone as the greatest swimmer ever. Bravo! And thank you.

    Ropelight (3100ad)

  4. Amazing to watch the super slo-mo. I had to view it several times before I could believe Phelps touched first. Up until ten meters to go, it looked as if he had no chance.

    Pigilito (5d4652)

  5. Phelps really did come out of nowhere. I was sure he had no chance, and then he started to catch up. And then he at least appeared to screw up the finish, but apparently not.

    I cannot imagine the pressure on him to keep up this string of wins. At least the last one is a relay. He can do his best and leave it up to his able teammates.

    Is he swimming the fly in the IM?

    Juan (4cdfb7)

  6. Juan,

    ESPN’s Pat Forde thinks Phelps will swim the butterfly on the third leg:

    World-record holder Aaron Peirsol will swim the leadoff backstroke leg, with ’04 relay gold medalist Brendan Hansen likely to follow in breaststroke. If the race isn’t over at that point, expect Phelps to put it out of reach in the butterfly and set up a leisurely freestyle leg for whoever finishes it off. (If Phelps is beaten by Crocker in the 100 fly, Phelps might swim the prelim and Crocker the final — but both would get gold medals.)

    The butterfly is apparently his best event so he will probably swim the third leg, but I wonder if Phelps might swim the freestyle. Not only would it be fitting if he swims the last leg of his last race (at this Olympics) but he has the mental toughness you want in a finisher.

    DRJ (a5243f)

  7. Phelps’ teammate Jason Lezak swam a 100 split of 46.0 in the freestyle relay — the fastest split of all time — so there is no way that they will bump him from the medley relay. Phelps will swim the butterfly leg.

    The current medley relay record for men is 3:30.68. Look for the U.S. team to be about a 3:28 tomorrow.

    JVW (7ba324)

  8. At those speeds (100 meters in about 50 seconds = appx 2m/s), the 1/100 of a second margin means that it was about 3/4 of an inch between them. A rough example would be the length of the very last joint on your pinkie finger. Not including any overly long fingernails.

    Wow.

    Drumwaster (5ccf59)

  9. Vermont, it’s normal to have close finishes in any great sport. Otherwise, it’s not a fair and fun contest.

    You’re right that the silver medalist is virtually as good as gold winner in this event, but we all know that. And a silver medal at the olympics is a great accomplishment except to the braindead. Hell, just getting to compete is huge. But you obviously didn’t watch this race. The come back from behind to have a fighting chance and edging out the competition is not a minor or slight thing to see.

    Juan (4cdfb7)

  10. I remember one stupid question that Jay Leno asked Michelle Kwan after she was just edged out by Tara Lupinsky in the Nagano Olympics: “How do you feel about losing the Gold Medal?”

    Her reply was as cool as the ice she performs on when she said, “I didn’t lose the Gold. I won the Silver.”

    That’s true sportsmanship.

    Drumwaster (5ccf59)

  11. See
    http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_galle ry/0808/oly.phelps.sequence/content.5.html
    for some interesting photos.

    Ira (28a423)

  12. Sorry, that link doesn’t appear to work. You can get there from here:
    http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/the-phelps-cavic-photo-finish/

    Ira (28a423)

  13. Ira,

    Good photos. Here’s the SI link to the entire sequence. The first frame shows Phelps touch first.

    DRJ (a5243f)

  14. Phelps and his fans should count their blessings that swimming isn’t a judged, refereed, or umpired sport at the Olympics. And that the ‘old’ days when they used hand timing with stop watches are long gone.

    allan (28f0b3)

  15. Hey, DRJ, don’t you know that NBC delays its West Coast showing of the Olympics by three hours? For those who read your report BEFORE the race was shown in this region, thanks for spoiling the fun.

    james fulton (86d115)


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