Michael Phelps has the swagger of a prize fighter, the grin of a man who knows he will pummel the opposition. He walks out to the pool with headphones affixed firm, a world unto himself. And with 21 gold medals, he is just that: planet Phelps revolves to an orbit no man has charted before. Just where this celestial being will rest and just how long he will prove that the rest in that expanse of water 50 meters long are mere satellites to his shining brilliance, is still open. For, every time this 31-year-old treads water here at Rio, he unleashes a tsunami of magnificence.
Twenty-one gold. That’s not even the lot of many nations. India has a total haul of 26 mere medals from 23 Games (with 9 gold, 8 coming from our glorious age of hockey dominance).
Phelps, wipes his feet forcefully with a towel, puts one leg up onto the starting block and looks down, composing himself. It’s the start of the 200 m Butterfly final. The one event that he loves, the one that he owned. The one where he has bettered the world mark eight times. And the one where he was shocked by the man who was in the lane to his left here. There was history there. No one had touched Phelps since 2000, Clos did.
At London, South Africa’s Chad Le Clos took gold to become the only man to beat him at it since 2000. Later words were said, ugly words. Phelps, the lord of the pool, wanted closure. He wanted to stamp his dominance one time more.
Poised on the brink of his leap, the start was called off. Phelps shook his head. Too much noise. People knew there was history in the offing, they wanted to be part of it, they wanted him to know that they knew what was at stake. He wiped his feet again before getting back on the block, he’s fastidious about that. Far more than anyone else on the start line. Even a small film may, after all, lessen traction by that millisecond which is the margin between podium and nothing in swimming.
The butterfly stroke is an excruciating, demanding swim. By 50 metres, Phelps was already ahead of le Clos, he never gave him a look-in at all. Instead another generation was challenging him. The 19-year-old Hungarian Tamas Kenderesi had qualified fastest; he had bested Phelps in the last 20-odd metres of their heat. At the far corner of the pool, 21-year-old Masato Sakai of Japan came out of nowhere. They were hauling him in.
After all, when these young men were boys and had been working on their Olympian dream, Phelps had been smoking Marijuana. Two years ago, he was partying hard and in retirement. Even though he looked like he was fading, Phelps held out his long arms enough. Sakai ended 0.04 seconds behind. Enough. Gold number 20.
Before the start, he was all routine. All business. At theend he was all himself: holding his arms up, a single finger rose in each hand. Proclaiming his reclamation of his throne, egging on the crowd as he sat astride the lane rope. What an ovation they gave him, sound reverberating from the rafters.
Had Phelps been this man with single-minded devotion and the monk lifestyle that sporting excellence demands, perhaps cynical writers like your correspondent would not be so much in thrall. He is said to have been in rehab twice, it’s been reported that he dated a transsexual model and his photo with a bong the year after Beijing went viral.
Flawed brilliance is so much easier to relate to. We can see so much of ourselves in such men. After all plain perfection would be boring, jaundiced perfection stays more human. Perhaps that’s why the arena all but emptied out after Phelps led the US relay team to anchor the 4x200m freestyle relay gold soon after and claim his 21st gold.
The most poignant moment of the night was when he went up the stands to greet his partner Nicole Johnson and their son Boomer. Mother Debbie looked on, patting the back of his head. The boy who was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at the age of nine had been sculpted into a world record holder at 15 by his mother. He broke down at the podium, tears streaming down his face.
That’s why we love Michael Phelps. Even as he mows down records in the pool like a dehumanized robot, he breaks down later to allow us to relate to the man in the medal machine. Tears are a language sans borders. They are plain human.