I Phelp(t) it!!

The title is supposed to be read as ' I Felt it'. I am just trying to be a little more imaginative.

But, what a race the 4*100 M Freestyle turned out to be. Described by many experts as the best relay ever, I was priviledged enough to watch it live on the internet. Manish and I have become big M.Phelps fans.

I have been following swimming as an Olympic sport for quite sometime now. It all started in the 1996 Olympics, I was a Alexander Popov fan then. Then came the Ian Thorpe and Hoogenband rivalry and now Michael Phelps. All of them are legendary. They have aimed for the sky, raised the bar so high that other atheletes find it virtually impossible to get even close.

To achieve this kind of success when you are just 23, in the case of Phelps is un-freakin-imaginable.

Back to the race. This was one of the event that Phelps had failed to get a Gold in, 4 years back at Athens. There was ample pre-race media coverage for the race, one because US were not the clear favorites for the race and two, because the French swimmer, Alain Bernard, had said that ' They would smash the US'.

Phelps, ran the first leg of the race and it was not the best swim ever. But his average swim still meant that US was in the top 3. The 2nd swimmer, Garrett , did better and US was in the top 2. But then the twist, the turn in the plot. Cullen Jones, proved to be a tad slow and gave away the advantage and US were left rallying behind.

Perfect stage for the now-legendary Jason Lezak to step in. A small note here, Lezak is from Irvine, CA which is like 10 miles from my place. Go Orange County Go!!!!

So when Lezak jumped in, he was chasing Bernard, with 100 M to go and Phelps hopes of 8 Gold Medals hanging by a thread. Personally, I did not expect Lezak to make up the distance that he lagged.

At the 50M turn, he was 0.82 of a second behind. In terms of swimming lingo, this is almost impossible to cover in 50M. Let alone when the 100M record holder is whom you are chasing. But legendary stories are made of this. Fairy tales are supposed to be outcomes of impossible scenarios. Lezak found energy from some somwhere deep inside and kept pulling close to Bernard. Manish and I kept screaming for Lezak to reach the finish first. 20M to go and it was still looking like a French victory. "No, this cant happen!!" I said. Phelps needs 8 and this is not possible.

The 2 touch the end-board simulataneously, but Lezak had out-fingered Bernard to hand US what is now hailed as the Best Relay Victory ever in a pool. He made up almost a second in the final 50 M. Awesome!!!

The difference between the 2 teams, 8 hundreth of a second.

Just goes to show, what mental strength these guys are made of. The drive to achieve gold, to be the best in the world. I plan to catch all the Phelp swims live. I hope TVAnts does not let me down. His next race is in another 45 minutes and then another one an hour after that.

8 golds or no, that screaming Phelp photograph which is all over the papers today, is so-far the highlight of my Beijing Olympics.

Go Phelps go!!

P.S: As expected, Sania Mirza has AGAIN had an injury. She retired in the second set, after (of course) losing the 1st set. Sportpersons like her, who are made of media hype and not their sporting abilities should be sent to retard homes along with the media scribes who waste printspace on them.