Phelps’ gold medal obsession was Olympian

By Darrell Laurant

Published: August 21, 2008

Like a lot of other people, I got hooked on Michael Phelps last week.

Normally, the only time journalists get interested in people in the water is if there’s a drowning. There are no fantasy swimming leagues, no ESPN Swim Meet of the Week, and if you’d asked most folks a month ago who Michael Phelps was, they might have answered: “I dunno. My Congressman?“

Gradually, though, I found myself totally immersed (no pun intended) in Phelps’ quest for enough gold medals to sink him to the bottom of the pool—eight of them in all. I thrilled at Jason Lezak’s come-from-behind victory over annoying Frenchman Alain Bernard in one of the relays, thus keeping Phelps’ hopes alive, and I stared intently at the endless replays of Phelps’ 100th’s of a second squeaker over Milorad Cavic, a Serbian swimmer from Southern California.

Yes, you can grow up in Southern California and swim for Serbia—indeed, you can compete for any country your grandparents came from. Therefore, I could theoretically compete for either the Belgian or the Dutch Olympic teams, although I’m not sure what event I could qualify for (is column-writing an Olympic event yet?)

The more I learned about Michael Phelps, however, the more I realized that we tend to miss the point of Olympic glory.

Yes, Michael Phelps has the perfect swimmer’s body, just short of owning webbed feet. Yes, he’s mentally tough. Yes, his teammates like him.
But the golden boy from Baltimore inadvertently hit on something with his wry answer to a press conference question: “How does someone get a swimmers’ body?“

“By swimming,“ Phelps replied.

Think of something you’re good at (come on, everybody’s good at something).

Say you’re a pretty good cook. So, quit your day job and train under one of the best chefs in America. Cook stuff eight hours a day, six days a week. Have someone knowledgeable critique what you create, then cook some more. Do this for four years. Chances are, you’d be better than pretty good at the end of it.

I hear you. Pretty good is quite enough for you.

Olympic gold is, more than anything else, a testament to obsession. Phelps may have been born to swim (just as Jamaican supersprinter Usain Bolt, with apologies to Bruce Springsteen, was born to run), but that would not have been enough.

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?“ a motorists asks a man on a New York street.

“Practice, practice, practice,“ the man tells him.

With the Olympics, though, there is also the strong element of luck. And what you think is the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel of self-punishment and pre-dawn workouts could turn out to be a train.

The Olympics are unforgiving. You can’t tell the Olympic officials, on the day your event is scheduled: “Hey, any chance I could do this tomorrow? My biorhythms aren’t quite right.“

Maybe you wake up that day with a headache. Maybe you pulled a muscle trying to do too much in practice the day before. Maybe, as in the case of numerous nations there, your country is at war with somebody.

Tough. This is your chance, and you have to make the most of it. No wonder gymnastics competitors often cry when they finish a routine on their butts and see that gold medal flying out of the arena.

The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of humans simply aren’t prepared to make the sacrifices it takes to make us the best in the world. At anything.

That doesn’t make us bad people, just human.