Phelps keeps adding to crock of gold

AFTER YESTERDAY morning in the swimming pool, the crowd stood around the Water Cube and wondered if perhaps Michael Phelps had left some kind of superhuman particles, some swimming magic dust, behind him in the water. The man who is pushing the mysterious sport to a new frontier is bringing the best of the rest along with him.

Kinetic energy seemed as good as any explanation given for what will go down as one of the most famous days in swimming. Phelps left the arena with two more gold medals, which brought his total Olympic gold medal count to 11.

He is out there alone. He has a day off today to recover for his bid to claim the last three gold medals that would leave him possibly the most illustrious Olympian the world will see this century.

After his first coup yesterday, when he simply swallowed up the field with his huge, engulfing butterfly stroke to break his own world record, clocking 1:52.03, the thrilled crowd in the auditorium were a bit confused by his muted reaction. After he touched the wall, Phelps emerged gasping for air and leaned over the ropes rubbing his eyes and shaking his head.

Only later did it become clear he had swum the last two lengths with leaking goggles; his eyes were so chlorine-stung he did not immediately realise what he had done.

That hindrance simply deepened the Phelps myth as coaches and other swimmers gathered in a mixed zone to talk about it all.

"Just think how he would have been had that (the goggles mishap) not happened," marvelled Eddie Reese, the USA head coach. "He is not just winning, he is crunching world records and the field. It's amazing."

Reese has stopped trying to rationalise Phelps's times and achievements in terms of history or hard analysis. Like most people in the Water Cube, he prefers to sit back and enjoy the show.

The first race was nothing more than a race against time for Phelps and for second place among the rest. Not even the malfunctioning of the goggles enabled Laszlo Cseh, the great Hungarian whose destiny seems to be wearing silver medals on the podium alongside Phelps, to profit.

"Michael kind of performs independent of his feelings," his coach Bob Bowman said later.

At 11.19am, just an hour after his first gold, Phelps was back in the water leading off the 4x200m team. He posted the fasted time - 1:43.31 - and set a standard that pushed Ryan Lochte, Ricky Berens and Peter Vanderkaay into another devastating team swim.

They won gold and broke the world record in 6:58.56 before a delirious crowd.

It was another hot day in Beijing but the air in the pool was virtually liquid hot as Phelps emerged from the water. No team had ever previously gone under seven minutes.

But it was a day when the phenomenal was achieved as though it were the norm. Just before Phelps made his first appearance, Italy's Federica Pellegrini had broken her own world record in the 200-metre freestyle final, touching at 1.54.82.

And just before the relay, Australia's Stephanie Rice bettered the record she set in March for the 200-metre medley, edging out the Olympic record holder Kirsty Coventry. Later she told a delighted Aussie press she had felt unwell in the hours before the race.

"It got me down a little bit - I was frustrated that I had trained so hard and I wasn't able to come in 100 per cent. But I love the pressure and I love the nerves. That is how I get the most out of myself."

Rice's performance added to the growing sense that this was a once-in-a-generation hour of pool magic, when the brightest lights of the water moved at the kind of speed that 20 years ago would have seemed impossible.

But while Pellegrini and Rice made it a classic day of swimming, even they understood that this was Michael Phelps's moment in history. He eclipsed the granite names of the last century - Finland's running man Paavo Nurmi, Larisa Latynina the Soviet gymnast and, of course, Mark Spitz, who had all won nine medals.

For one night, Phelps joined them in that elite club before he plunged in for that unprecedented butterfly swim. Always understated, Phelps was understandably tongue-tied when he tried to articulate his feelings minutes after he stepped off the medal podium with his team-mates.

"I think I am almost at a loss for words. Growing up I always wanted to be an Olympian. Now to be the most decorated Olympian of all time, I have nothing to say. I am speechless."

So were thousands of others in the sweltering Water Cube, the place where swimming history was rewritten before the sun had fully risen over China.