Awkward humility belies ferocious fighting nature

SWIMMING: SO THERE it ended. The big, gawky kid climbed out of the pool having won his eighth gold medal, and with a lack of polish that was amusing as well as refreshing announced that he didn't really know what to feel now that he had annexed such a large chunk of Olympic history.

"I guess I just kind of want to see my mom," he said.

Thus Michael Phelps finished his Beijing odyssey with a haul and a record that will surely remained unmatched. His closing swim was as part of the US 4x100-metre medley relay yesterday morning. Together they finished their work with a world record (3:29:34) and defended their title in a breathtaking finish against an Australian challenge that was just 0.7 of a second away from success.

The intrigue lay in Phelps having to depend on others to add the final, emphatic exclamation mark to a momentous and historic week of swimming.

Aaron Peirsol in the backstroke, and then Brendan Hansen in the breaststroke, pushed out the pace, but the Australians, whose sense of ownership of the pool has been badly dented by Phelps, could not be shaken.

So to Phelps's butterfly leg.

He was timed at 50.15, a second quicker than Andrew Lauterstein, his Australian rival. For the second time this week that gave Jason Lezak a job to do. This time he had to hold off Eamon Sullivan, the Australians' top freestyler.

That he did. Just.

The slender margin was a reminder of the myriad things that have to come together to make an achievement like Phelps's happen.

He has swum to the limit all week. Here in the gleaming, technologically complicit Water Cube (it yielded 24 world records), Phelps swam 17 times.

Through it all Phelps just listened to his rap and got on with it with a quiet courtesy and humility which comes from years and years of 5am starts and the constant experience of being broken down by the challenges of his sport.

For the record, his eighth gold formally eclipsed the collection amassed by Mark Spitz in 1972.

In reality, Phelps has been out of sight from the pack and even from Spitz as an Olympian achiever for some time.

His swims (17 in a week, compared to 13 for Spitz), the longevity of his excellence (this is his third Games, he has 14 golds and two bronzes; Spitz raced in 1968 and 1972) and his impact are far greater than anybody can have imagined.

He spoke afterwards with that awkward humility and innocence which is as much his trademark as the big ears and aquaplaned body.

"The whole thing, every race, one after the other, from winning by one-hundredth of a second yesterday (Saturday) to finishing off with a world record, it's an amazing experience and something I will have forever.

"I literally wanted to do something that no one's ever done before in this sport. Without the help of my team-mates it wouldn't have been possible. We all came together as one unit."

On Saturday, Phelps had once again brushed with the humiliation of being merely mortal when, while finishing his individual programme, he needed to summon the last fragments of energy from within to out-touch Milorad Cavic in the 100-metre butterfly final. The Serbian had mistimed his touch ever so slightly.

If that was the closest shave in an astonishing week, Phelps could spend Saturday night looking forward to the relay not suspecting that the Australians would run his compatriots so close. They pulled it out for Phelps, though, and he finished the Games with eight golds from eight events, seven world records, and having changed the face of the sport.

For a kid who found life difficult after his parents divorced when he was seven - not least because of his looks - it is a remarkable story of redemption. His mother, Debbie, who after his coach, Bob Bowman, can claim most of the supporting-cast credit, once described the young Phelps as a "social irritant", but the energies he poured into swimming did more than make him an Olympic medallist: they shaped an entire personality. The myriad little things which must come together.

The record, or the hope of it, was kept intact on Monday by Lezak's astonishing anchor leg in the 100-metre freestyle relay, an act of loyalty that had its roots back in Athens when Phelps's friend and team-mate Ian Crocker swam a horrific last leg in the same event and condemned Phelps to a bronze medal.

In the medley final at the end of that week in Athens, Phelps, having assured himself of a medal by swimming in the heats, withdrew from the final to offer his place to Crocker, a gesture repaid in the short term with a win in Athens and in the long term with the loyalty Phelps has enjoyed here.

Little things. He was fortunate 12 years ago that a former swimmer who was determined to be a great coach came to his pool in Baltimore and put a rein on the troublesome teenager.

Bowman had followed his mentor in coaching, Paul Bergen, at poolside watching and learning. When Bergen decided he preferred to train horses than swimmers, Bowman took his notebook out onto the gallops. He kept asking Bergen about swimmers and the physiology of swimming until he knew enough.

Bowman trains nine racehorses himself now but says you couldn't do to animals the sort of sessions he has put Phelps through. These include 30 sets of 100-metre sprints, which require Phelps to climb out of the pool at the end of each 50, a torture Phelps says has left him dizzy.

Yet Bowman's tough-love approach registered with something hard and competitive in the kid. On the pool deck in Beijing, with his earphones and rap, Phelps has been every inch the laid-back kid. Even when he really should have hurried off the podium and on to the starting blocks, he never hurried, letting his co-medallists have their time and moment.

Yet when his size-14 feet curl around that starting block he is a different animal, a natural and ferocious competitor.

Yesterday he described the week in China as nothing but "an upwards rollercoaster, it's been nothing but fun". There is no sign the rollercoaster will crest the summit and start listening to gravity any time soon.

Phelps has already made the sort of commercial impact other swimmers have only dreamt of. His portfolio of sponsors rivals that of the Games themselves, and the traditional problem of high-profile swimmers, of disappearing for four years between Olympics, seems unlikely to affect him.

He is 23 and he says he wants to be in London. Between now and then he says he would like to try a few new events "and see what happens". Shudder.

It's Michael Phelps's world.

We all just paddle in it.