bjournal::juxtapoz

Greatest Achievement Ever (ESPN)

A lot of people think that the winning of eight gold medals in a single Olympic games is the greatest athletic achievement ever. With all due respect to Michael Phelps- and I do respect what he has done and his athleticism- I am not even certain that his is the greatest achievement in Olympic history (Jesse Owens, Emil Zátopek), let alone athletic history (Edwin Moses, Babe Didrikson, Lance Armstrong, etc.).

We might not even be talking about Michael Phelps (or Mark Spitz) for that matter, if early Olympians had been allowed to compete in more than four events, or if some of the early Olympians had such a plethora of events to compete in. For reference, as of this writing, 130 gold medals have been given out in the 2008 Olympics, sixteen of which were given for male swimming events. The 1896 Olympics handed out forty-three gold medals, and only four to swimmers (actually, one of the swimming events was only open to sailors from the Greek navy). In 1900, there were ninety gold medals handed out, seven to swimmers.

Continuing that train of thought, what if other events gave out medals for different skills? For example, what if there were medals for dunking a basketball, shooting a basketball from three-point range, shooting a basketball from two-point range, shooting a free throw, dribbling a basketball, passing a basketball, rebounding a basketball, plus medals for holding the scoring title during the Games. If that were the case, perhaps LeBron James or Lisa Leslie would be trying to win his or her tenth medal tomorrow. Or, conversely, if swimming just gave out one medal for whoever won the “Olympic meet,” but they’d have to face teams head-to-head in elimination format every three days for the whole Olympics.

I guess my point is that is hard to compare Phelps’ feat against other feats that aren’t swimming and that aren’t reasonably recent. I mean, you can really only run a 100 meter dash one way- though, I suppose one could come up with a 4x100 IM running event: backwards running, skipping, side-to-side, and “freestyle.” The way swimming works, if you want to be known as a great swimmer, you have to win six or seven or eight golds in the Olympics (quick! name five swimmers who competed in the 2000 Olympics). In track, if you can win the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay, and the long jump, or the 200m and 400m, you’ll be remembered (Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson).

The article also makes the point of saying that one of the things that makes Phelps’ performance so noteworthy, are the number of world records that he set in the process. So far, a world record has been broken in twenty-one of thirty-two events, with nine additional Olympic records broken (the only events thus far that haven’t had either an Olympic or world record broken are the womens’ 100m butterfly and mens’ 400m freestyle). The pool is fast, and swimmers get faster. The breaking of world records is intrinsically unimpressive.

Again, I think that what Phelps has done is very impressive, and I know that I have no hope of doing anything similar, but there is no question in my mind that this is not the greatest athletic achievement in history.