>>>>>>>Well, my rant of the day is that I am tired of listening / reading / viewing everywhere that Michael Phelps is the best athlete of the history (sometimes Olympic is omitted) for all the Gold medals he got, and I think that is just a pile of BS. How can the best boxer / judoca / football player / basketball player etc etc will ever win more than one medal when they have only one fricking chance? Furthermore, why in hell there are so many competitions for some sports, like swimming? Why don't they just consolidate all those categories (like 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m 1010.192398m) into one competition to see who is the best swimmer, and then give them just one Gold damn medal. Like in sailing, give points according to their position in each race and the one that has in the end less point is the winner
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>>>>>>I have exactly the same gripe about the incessant statements about Phelps being the greatest Olympic athlete in history because he has won the most gold medals. It doesn't detract at all from his achievements, which are phenomenal. But he is in a sport where it is possible to compete for a great number of medals, including relays where you are part of a team. (Although in this case the relays are possibly his most vulnerable events). As you say, a boxer or basketball player can only win one medal per Olympics.
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>>>>>>Leaving aside the hyperbole of announcers, Phelps has if possible been exceeding expectations. Given all the great competition he is facing, I figured he would finish "only" second or third in a couple of them. It's starting to look like he may in fact run the table. Anything can happen in any given race -- did you see the one yesterday where he swam a 200 meter final with his goggles filled with water? -- and the cumulative fatigue of swimming so many races, 17, remains to be seen.
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>>>>>>Re consolidating the swimming events, bad idea IMO. They are very different beasts. Not only do you have four separate strokes, there is a big difference between the sprints, intermediate distances, and long distances. Not even Phelps does all of them.
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>>>>>And to add to that, having such a one-man-show phenomenon, like Phelps, does somewhat bump up the gold score for the USA. There aren't other phenomena like him in other sports in other teams to likewise bump up their scores.
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>>>>>And how about Spitz, who won 7 gold in 1972 alone? Couldn't he be regarded as the best of all time in getting so many in one contest?
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>>>>That's the real record Phelps is going for in Beijing, not the lifetime golds. He is trying to win 8 gold medals in this Olympics. 5 down, 3 to go.
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>>>Imagine if one country had a world-beating hockey team, that would blow away all the opposition in 30-min hockey, 5-a-side hockey, all-day hockey, blindfolded hockey, 3-steps hockey (like in basketball) ... But of course there aren't those events, and so the team can win only one medal. Thus it's unfair for Phelps to get half of USA's medals all by himself. All it takes is to have one ace in a multi-medal-winning area and you're made.
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>>>BTW what happened to that Ozzie guy, with the flippers for feet, who swept the swimming board a few years ago, esp. in the Commonwealth Games. I haven't heard word one about him for a few years.
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>>>>The Brits have some good swimmers this year. I don't have any numbers for you but they have won some medals and been in contention in lots of races.
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>>>Apparently this is the best financed and most prepared-for Olympics ever. And the Brit team is holed up in Macau to acclimatise without the smog. I think they expect to come c. 9th-11th but in 2012 to be in the top 5, or summat like that.
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>Blighty THIRD in the medal tables! Whassup with that!?
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>We've (so far anyway) surpassed the 2012 target. I find this all unbelievable. I was "looking forward" to another disastrous Games, with our main rivals, Germany and France, way ahead of us as usual. It used to always be USA, then Russia. I never thought I'd live to see the day! :-)

Rebecca Adlington's gold in the 1500 free was a little lost in all the hoopla over Michael Phelps. She broke Janet Evans's record, which had stood since 1989. That is donkey years in swimming, where records are routinely broken and rebroken. All the more amazing that it stood so long with all the advances in swimsuits, pools, and training. Hats off to Adlington for finally breaking it.