Phelps Meets the Press
by Josh Gerstein
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 at 2:41 AM
BEIJING--By my count, more than 50 television cameras were on hand as Michael Phelps came before the press Sunday afternoon to reflect on his record-breaking achievement of eight Gold medals in a single Olympics.
"I'm not really sure what to say. It was fun," Phelps told the assmbled horde."I'm thankful everything turned out pretty much perfect.....This has been one of the greatest weeks of my life, if not the greatest."
Phelps said he doesn't expect his record, which broke that of Mark Spitz in the 1972 Olympics in Munich, to stand forever. "Records are always made to be broken, no matter what they are," he said. He also said he wanted to be respectful to Spitz's record, which stood for 36 years. "I want to be the first Michael Phelps, not the second Mark Spitz," Phelps said. "Never once will I downplay his accomplishment."
Phelps may also have inadvertently achieved another record: becoming the most-tested athlete in Olympic history. Part of the one hour delay to his meeting with the press was because he was in "doping control," one functionary said in explaining the timing.
"It's pretty much almost every--every finals session, a few preliminary sessions, the day I got here, in Singapore, in Palo Alto," Phelps said in response to a question about the frequency of the tests. He by "rough estimate" he's probably been tested 40 times since the U.S. Olympic swimming trials in early July.
Some athletes have complained that the tests are so frequent they could make athletes sluggish by literally draining their blood, but Phelps said he took it in stride. "It's part of the game and you know its good for the sport to have it," he said.
Asked what he would have changed about the past week of eight Golds and seven world records, Phelps did not cite his win yesterday by the narrowest of margins, one-hundredth of a second, in the 100-meter Butterfly. Instead, he cited his Gold medal performance in the 200-meter fly last week, where his goggles filled with water. "I think i could go faster in that," he said today. "It was a wardrobe malfunction."
Phelps said his immediate plans include a vacation and sleeping in his own bed in Maryland. However, he said he plans to keep swimming competitively, though he hasn't decided precisely what to do next. He also said he was thrilled that his races were shown on big screens after a Baltimore Ravens football game in his hometown and at a Cincinnati Reds baseball game. "There are some things i still want to do to raise the bar in the sport of swimming more," he said.
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