PHOTO FINISH: After rowing for more than a mile, the gold medal came down to an inch. Until then, I’m dubious. He will be racing in the 4×100 medley relay Saturday night. Once again, he has been a star among stars.
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Joseph Schooling’s dreams came true in more ways than one last night.
The Olympian, who has so far won a record-breaking 22 gold medals during his professional career, clarified, “I have two laps left in my career so I am happy and I’m excited and looking forward to tomorrow”.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Phelps’s Olympic journey started as precocious 15-year-old at Sydney 2000.
He’s ready to move on, and this time he really seems to mean it.
In 2015, he showed that he was going to be a medal contender for Rio when he finished third at the world championships in Russian Federation, albeit with Phelps absent. He insists the same will not happen again. I know Phelps is a father now and that he obviously loves his fiancee and his baby.
That’s what people wonder, and that’s why even his teammates are skeptical this retirement will stick.
While Phelps wasn’t all that persuasive when he first retired after the 2012 London Games – and, indeed, he began eyeing a return to swimming about a year later – the big hug for Schooling and the huge smile when it was done told a different story this time.
After Phelps was diagnosed with the disease aged nine, his parents wanted to give him an outlet for his extra energy. “And that doesn’t include the 47 countries that have participated without winning any gold medals”. Right now Ervin is 35, the same age Phelps would be if the takes a run at the 2020 Olympics. This is it. I said it a bunch before.
The U.S. holds the world record, at 3:52.05 – a time that the American team clocked at the London 2012 Games. “Can’t complain too much”, he said. Your sense of self-worth and your value is caught up in what you have achieved as a competitor.
Already a world-renowned athlete, Phelps gained extra notoriety at the Rio Olympics for two things: his intense #PhelpsFace in the warm-up before the 200-meter buttefly semi-final, and the round bruises all over his body from a restorative process called cupping.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve heard all that before, but the fact that Phelps was in Rio at all was a product of circumstances that transcend something so simplistic as man’s age-old quest for shiny objects.
Schooling and Phelps also drove around a country club in a golf kart in search of monkeys who had a taste for the US team’s nutrition bars.
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He uses his double-jointed ankles, knees and arms to generate more thrust than other swimmers through the water, has a wingspan three inches longer than his height and has relatively short legs and torso, to help him “plane” through the water. I remember his anger. And I am somebody who still wants to win every race and still wants to be in the middle of the pool (with the fastest qualifiers).
