Phelps Does It!
by Josh Gerstein
Sat, 16 Aug 2008 at 11:31 PM
BEIJING--Super-swimmer Michael Phelps won his eighth Gold medal here moments ago, surpassing Mark Spitz's record from the 1972 Olympics.
The U.S. men's 4x100 relay team came in at 3:29.34, just seven-tenths of a second ahead of Australia, which took the Silver. Japan won the Bronze.
The other teams did not appear shy about trying to wrest the would-be record Gold from Phelps. While the American lead-off backstroke swimmer, Aaron Peirsol, touched the wall two-tenths of a second ahead of the Russian team, that lead was erased on the second leg where the American breaststroke swimmer, Brendan Hansen, fell to third place, about half a second behind Japan and a hair behind Australia.
During his butterly leg, Phelps made up the deficit and pushed America back into the lead by about a quarter second over Japan. Australia turned on the juice in the final, freestyle leg, with Aussie Eamon Sullivan seemingly even with American Jason Lezak, but Lezak, a strong closer, pulled away to take the gold for himself, Phelps and the rest of the team.
Also worth noting that the Americans set a new world record by shaving 1.3 seconds off the standing record from Athens in 2004, though since records have been falling like dodo birds in swmming here the accomplishment seems bizarrely unremarkable.
If you think you've been seeing a lot of Michael Phelps so far in coverage of this Olympics, just wait. The orgy is about to begin.
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