Phenomenal Phelps ready for records

By Alan Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) - Never mind the moon, Michael Phelps will become the sporting equivalent of the first man on Mars if he wins eight swimming gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.

The challenge facing the 23-year-old American is to go where no human has gone before and become the most successful athlete in the history of the Games.

Mark Spitz, who set seven world records to win seven golds in the pool at the 1972 Munich Olympics, believes the man from Baltimore can more than match his record haul from a single Games.

"He will be unbelievable," American Spitz told Reuters at this month's U.S. Olympic trials. "He's going to do a little schooling for the rest of the world and it's going to be exciting."

Before the 2004 Athens Olympics, Spitz told the world "if he wins seven gold medals and ties what I did then it would be like I was the first man on the moon and he became the second.

"If he wins more than seven, then he becomes the first man on Mars."

In Athens, Phelps was promised $1 million by a personal sponsor if he broke Spitz's record and he came close with six golds and two bronzes, a record for medals at a single Games.

He went one better at last year's world championships when he bagged a record seven golds with five world record times. He might have won an eighth gold had the U.S. team not been disqualified from the medley relay for a botched change.

Phelps is the first male swimmer to break two world records in separate events on the same day and his domination in the pool has been compared to that of Tiger Woods in golf or Roger Federer in tennis.

"I think anything is possible with Michael," Australian Grant Hackett, the king of distance swimming, said this year.

"He always seems to punch above in every event that he goes in, he's just an animal when it comes to competing."

Phelps has qualified for eight events, five individual (the 200 and 400m medley, 100 and 200m butterfly and 200m freestyle) and three relays.

He needs four more titles in Beijing to surpass Finland's Paavo Nurmi, Russian Larissa Latynina, Spitz and American sprinter Carl Lewis as the athlete with the most Olympic gold medals.

Phelps started swimming at the age of seven, after being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He qualified for the 2000 Olympics aged 15, becoming the youngest man to swim for the United States at a Games in 68 years.

He finished fifth in the 200m butterfly and six months later, in 2001, broke the world record in that event to become the youngest man to hold a world mark. He lowered it further that same year to win his first world championship.