RPT-Olympics-Swimming-Phelps moves swimming into new territory
BEIJING (Reuters) - The long search to find someone to better Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals at a single Olympics finally ended in Beijing.
American Michael Phelps won eight golds, seven of them in world record time, to confirm his status as the best swimmer of all time and lay claim to being the greatest Olympian.
Added to his titles from Athens, he became the most prolific Olympic gold medallist in any sport with a total of 14, and the possibility of more to come at the next Games in London in 2012.
He also earned himself a $1 million bonus from his sponsors, who were unable to find an insurer willing to bet against him, even though his eight victories were anything but easy.
Six of his golds, the 200 and 400 metres individual medley, the 200 butterfly, 200 freestyle, the medley relay and the 4x200 freestyle relay, were won comfortably but he needed a combination of luck and genius to win his other two.
He dodged a bullet in the 4x100 freestyle relay when team mate Jason Lezak mowed down Frenchman Alain Bernard, who won the 100 freestyle individual gold, on the anchor leg.
He then demonstrated his own incredible will to win when he came from behind in the 100 butterfly final to get his hands on the wall one-hundredth of a second before Serbia's Milorad Cavic.
"Nothing is impossible," Phelps said. "All it takes is an imagination."
Phelps' performances dominated events in the Water Cube but he was not the only swimmer turning heads as 25 world records fell in the nine days of competition.
Australia's Stephanie Rice won three gold medals, all in world record time, to emerge as the brightest new face in women's swimming.
She won the 200 and 400 individual medley finals and picked up a third gold medal in the 4x200 to spearhead an Australian team that won six of the 16 women's finals.
Breaststroker Leisel Jones and butterflyer Libby Trickett collected two golds each for Australia, winning their individual events and then teaming up in the medley relay.
Britain's Rebecca Adlington and Germany's Britta Steffen also won two gold medals each in individual events.
Steffen confirmed her reputation as the fastest women in water by winning the 50 and 100 freestyle sprint double while Adlington won the middle-distance double.
Adlington broke the oldest world record in swimming to win the women's 800 freestyle after taking the 400 freestyle.
"If anyone would have said before the Games that I'd win two golds and break the world record, I'd have laughed in their face," Adlington said.
Japan's Kosuke Kitajima, unrivalled as Asia's greatest swimmer, won the men's breaststroke double for the second time in succession to make a small dent in America's monopoly of the men's events, where they won 10 of the 16 finals.
Open water swimming, returning to the Games for the first time in more than a century, proved a hit because there was more rough and tumble than in the more genteel version in the pool.
Russian Larisa Ilchenko won the women's gold while Maarten van der Weijden of the Netherlands won the men's title seven years after he was diagnosed with leukaemia and given only a slim chance of survival.
(Editing by Jon Bramley)
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