No Limits

by Michael Phelps

  I first met Mark in 2004, at the Trials in Long Beach, not until then, as improbable as that may seem in hindsight. I knew he was likely to show up at some point at those Trials—Mark is based in Southern California—but didn’t know until after I won the 200 fly that Mark would be presenting nineteen-year-old me with the medal for the victory. At the podium, Mark shook my hand and leaned in to say a few words: “I’ll be over in Athens to watch you, and I’m behind you all the way. I know what you’re going through. I went through it once before. Enjoy it. Have fun with it. Go get ’em.” Mark has always had a gift for the dramatic and at that point he hopped onto the podium, grabbed my right wrist with his left hand and raised both of our arms to the sky. He then pointed to me with his right finger, as if to say, here’s your new champion. It was, and is still, one of the most exciting memories swimming could ever have given me.

  When I won six golds in Athens, Mark remained steadfastly encouraging. It was hardly a failure to win six gold medals, he would remind anyone who asked. Just wait, he would say. Michael is going to be better in 2008 than he was in 2004.

  Through the years, Mark could also not have been more gracious in pointing out how swimming had changed from his time to mine. In 1972, swimming featured a semifinal round only for 100-meter events; in each of Mark’s 200-meter events, he had to swim twice for a gold medal. I had to swim three times for each individual gold, with the exception of the 400 IM, an event with no semifinal. Over the course of the meet in Munich, Mark swam thirteen times in eight days, in all about 1,800 meters of racing, just over a mile; in Beijing, I would swim seventeen times over nine days for 3,400 meters, or just over two miles. In Mark’s day, American swimmers had very little international competition, and the relays, in particular, were all but guaranteed United States wins; by 2008, swimming was definitely global. The proof: In Beijing, swimmers from twenty-one countries would ultimately win medals. Moreover, Mark was not only the first to win seven golds; he was the first to win six. Going into Munich, he didn’t have to deal with the same sort of media attention—not to mention that the media world in 1972 was not one filled with cable channels, Internet outlets, newspapers, magazines, all of which had a never-ending need for copy and outtakes. “I can unequivocally say he has shown a different type of courage than perhaps I did,” Mark said of me. “I was not chasing Mark Spitz’s record.”

  In Omaha, it was hardly surprising to see that Mark would show extraordinary insight about what awaited me in Beijing, his remarks almost foretelling the challenges in races such as the 100 fly: “There were so many things that had to go right with my story with each one of my events, and there is something that had to go wrong with someone else. So they didn’t get that one flash of the greatest swim of their life to beat me. And it is kind of scary when you think about it, because it could have happened in any of the events.”

  He also ticked off three concerns that might stop me from getting to eight:

  I obviously had to win the first event, the 400 IM. That I had done.

  I had to continue my “winning ways” in the 100 fly, which he, like most observers, had tagged as the single toughest individual event on my calendar, in part because it was the one event in Beijing I would be racing in which I was not the world-record holder.

  I had won the 100 fly.

  Finally, Mark said, Michael can’t control the relays, adding, “Anything can happen.”

  • • •

  On paper, the medley relay, the final race of the Games at the Water Cube, looked like we should—repeat, should—win. But the Aussies had improved enough in their individual 100s to make a lot of people nervous. When you added up their best flat-start times in the four disciplines and compared them to ours, the Aussies were within 43-hundredths of a second, even if their best times had come in the semifinals, ours in the finals. Bob told my mom before the race that he thought our chances of winning were 60–40, maybe 70–30.

  This was a relay the United States had never lost at the Olympics (not counting the Games in 1980 in Moscow, when the U.S. team didn’t take part). The four of us in the finals—Peirsol, Hansen, me, Lezak—had been swimming medleys together since the 2002 Pan Pacs in Yokohama, when we set a world record. The 2004 team, with Crock swimming the butterfly leg in the finals, had won gold; Crock took the butterfly leg in the prelims of the medley in Beijing, so he stood to win gold again if we won in the finals.

  And I was going for an eighth gold.

  But that last element was not the be-all, end-all. “We absolutely respect and admire Michael’s goals but the feeling on the team is that by no means does one man come first,” Aaron told the New York Times before the medley final.

  “Honestly, when Lezak pushed out that relay, the next day guys were bringing up the fact that if Lezak didn’t touch out, Mike might not have had his eight golds. It’s not something Mike talks about. No one here is racing for second place, even the guys racing Mike. The feeling on our team is, we’re all racing to win. He’s doing exceptionally well; we’re all rooting for him. But by no means is he the only one we’re rooting for.”

  All the U.S. coaches were nervous. Everyone knew how much was at stake.

  Safe starts, they kept saying. Safe starts. If we heard it once we heard it a dozen times: If your start is a tenth too slow, you can make it up; if it’s a tenth too fast, you’re done. It’s an awful feeling, we kept hearing, to swim wondering if you’d false-started.

  Crock made sure in the preliminary to start safely, if cautiously. “When Phelps is done, I don’t want to stand in the way, to do something stupid like ’07,” he told a reporter later. “I want him to have every shot he’s got.”

  Grevers, who swam the backstroke leg in the prelim, acknowledged everyone’s anxiety: “I don’t think we were going to leave China if anyone DQ’d us,” he said.

  The morning of the final, the Cube was so jam-packed, with attendance way past the announced capacity of about 17,000, that people were crammed four and five deep in the aisles. Kobe Bryant and LeBron James came back to root us on. Our teammates and coaches were there. My family, of course—Whitney in a gold-colored top, Hilary a gold jacket, both in gold on purpose. Mom opted for black, nervous as always before the start of the race. On deck, there wasn’t much to say; we’d do any talking afterward.

  I was more than fired up. I’d gotten a text message that morning from back home, from Troy Pusateri. When I was just starting out at North Baltimore, Troy was one of the older boys; he used to call me “Little Phelps.” Troy was always himself mentally tough, too; he went on to become a Navy SEAL. Of all the messages I got from home during the course of the 2008 Olympics, Troy’s is the only one I saved so that I could read it afterward, get fired way, way up time and again. This is what it said:

  “All right, brother man!! Last race!! This one is NOT for you…it’s for your fans, like me, who you inspire every day for the past six years…it’s for Bob and your mom…. for without them none of this would be possible…it’s for the United States…the best damn country on the face of the earth…it’s for history!! It’s for you making this sport what it is today!! It’s for all the people who talked smack and doubted you ever!! It’s for being the best Olympic athlete ever to grace this planet!!! Go get ’em!! Don’t hold back!! You can do it, buddy!! I’m so damn proud of ya!! Give ’em hellllllllll !!!!!”

  On the deck, we got ourselves ready as Aaron and the other backstrokers got into the water and got set to go. The individual medley starts with the butterfly; the medley relay starts with the backstroke, which only makes sense. If backstroke were not first, the starting backstroke swimmer and the finishing previous swimmer might well crash into each other.

  Beep! Aaron and the others dove backwards, arms above their heads, and the race was on. The quiet of the start gave way to an immediate wall of sound all around us.

  Aaron had won gold in the 100 back in both Athens and Beijing. His backstroke is elegant. And yet still so powerful. He got us off to a sol
id start, though, as it turned out, he was 62-hundredths of a second slower than his gold-medal swim earlier in the week. Fortunately, Australia’s Hayden Stoeckel was 83-hundredths slower than the lifetime best he went in the 100 back semifinals.

  Brendan went next. His time was respectable, 59.27, but he was passed by both Kosuke Kitajima of Japan—his 58-flat split the fastest of all time—and by Australia’s Brenton Rickard. We were in third when it was my turn. The Japanese didn’t have the speed in the third and fourth legs, so they were not much of a worry. So it was now me and Lauterstein—a rematch of sorts from the 100 fly the day before.

  My start was deliberately super-slow. It was, in fact, so slow I actually saw Brendan’s hands touch the wall. I was taking no chances.

  Lauterstein got to the wall first but I just hammered hard on the turn. When I came up from underwater, I was in front. This was my last swim of the Games. I gave it everything I had. Everything. I drove so hard that my finish was ugly. Caught between strokes again. This time I did glide. Had to.

  When I touched, though, Jason had a cushion of 81-hundredths of a second.

  In the seventeenth of my seventeen swims, even with that glide slowing me down, I laid down the fastest 100 fly leg in history, 50.15; Lauterstein’s split of 51.03 was even faster than his 51.12 flat-swim for bronze the day before—but factoring in a relay flying start, not as fast as we had thought he might go. No way Jason was going to let himself, us, the United States down. He dug hard to the far wall. He turned and dug harder for home.

  As soon as I touched, I sprinted out of the pool to watch the race from behind our block. The noise level in the building was now out of control. Except for the guys in the water, it seemed everyone in the building was yelling. I was excited beyond words but also calmly confident. About halfway through Jason’s final lap, it became clear, even obvious—we were going to win. Standing there on the deck, I knew it. In the stands, Bob knew it, too. Eamon Sullivan was coming hard, but Jason was holding him off.

  With 15 meters to go, Bob thought to himself—you know what, this is actually going to happen. They’re going to win and Michael is going to have eight medals. He’s not going to have seven; he’s really going to have eight.

  “Come on, Jason!” Mom was yelling. “Come on, Jason! Come on, Jason! Come on, Jason! Come on, Jason!”

  Jason came home strong, and as he touched with his left hand, the roar of history enveloping all of us, my mom yelling, “Yes!” long and loud, holding the note as if she would never let it end, I pumped my fist in triumph, then grabbed Aaron and shouted, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  Jason pulled himself up out of the water and we huddled, just the four of us. “We’re part of history,” he said. Jason had gone 46.76 to Sullivan’s 46.65; we had won by seven-tenths of a second; we had set a new world record, 3:29.34. I said, “Without what you guys just did for me as a team this whole week, none of this would have been possible. We worked as a team and we worked really well together. I want to thank you guys for the opportunity you gave me.”

  In the stands, fate had put Ian Thorpe in the row immediately ahead of Mom and my sisters. He turned around and wished them congratulations, saying graciously and sincerely, “Good job. That was great.”

  Mom cried and cried, tears of joy and relief and amazement.

  We were honored after the race to be able to carry around an American flag that had flown in Iraq; it had been sent to one of our teammates, Larsen Jensen, a bronze medalist in Beijing in the 400 free. It made a special moment that much more special.

  When the medals ceremony ended, walking along the side of the pool, I saw Mom and the girls and started climbing through the photographers to get to them. The photographers parted, allowed me to get to my mother and sisters, then, as if on cue, immediately closed in around us. Surrounded there by dozens if not hundreds of cameras, by thousands of fans still packed into the Water Cube, it nonetheless seemed as if we were in our own little bubble.

  I said, “I’m so tired.”

  • • •

  Brendan won two breaststroke medals in Athens. In 2006, he set three world records in breaststroke events in three weeks. In Omaha at the 2008 Trials, he won the 100 breast. Then, to the surprise of many of us, he finished fourth in the 200 breast, failing to qualify in that event. What he did thereafter speaks to the kind of guy Brendan is. He immediately said he would try to help the two guys who beat him in the 200, Shanteau and Scott Spann. And then, when he could have begged off, Brendan went to sign autographs and pose for photos at a session USA Swimming had organized.

  The 100 breast final came early in the week in Beijing, on Monday, overshadowed completely by the 400 free relay final an hour later. Brendan, who is not related to my friend Stevie’s family, finished fourth. What Brendan did after that underscored again what kind of guy he is. He ran into my mom at the Beijing version of USA House, a gathering spot for the USOC and for American athletes and guests at every Olympics, and vowed, “I’ll be ready for the relay.”

  Brendan was not at his greatest in the medley. But, as he promised, he was ready. He did his part. And what he said after the race made plain why anyone would be proud to call Brendan a teammate.

  “It’s one of the greatest things sport in general has ever seen,” Brendan said when asked about the eight medals. “I mean, coming from a swimmer, looking at what he did, there’s an immeasurable amount of respect for what he did. The shame of it is other athletes are not going to realize how hard what he did is.

  “The world is fast at swimming now. The world was not fast when Mark Spitz did his seven. Everybody is stepping up. Michael got on the blocks for every final against seven different people and denied them every single time. That just goes to show—it’s every part of sport. It’s endurance, it’s strength, it’s pressure.

  “…He made the pressure putt in the U.S. Open, he won the Tour de France, and he knocked out the best fighter in the world in the sixteenth round with an uppercut. He did absolutely everything sport is supposed to be and he did it with a smile on his face, and he’s a good kid.”

  Brendan had another great line that, when I read it later, I also truly enjoyed. He said he had been amazed that I could separate myself so seemingly completely from the pool when I wasn’t at the Cube. Brendan said, “I’d be like, ‘Do you realize what you’re doing?’ And he’d be like, ‘Man, the pizza is good today.’”

  Aaron and Jason had great words, too.

  Aaron said, “He’s coined a new term: the Phelpsian feat. We’ve all heard of the Spitzian feat. I think there’s a new one now.” Jason said, “Before the race, I saw Kobe and LeBron, the two best players in the world in basketball. I love basketball; there is no way I was going to let these guys down. They came out here to watch this—it was awesome.”

  Seemingly everyone around the pool, in the moments after the race, was suddenly fair game: What do you think of what Michael did? Some of the answers were hugely, hugely flattering. Like Leisel Jones, the Australian breaststroke champion, who won two gold medals in Beijing: “I couldn’t care less about my swims. To swim the same era as him has been awesome.” Or the Australian coach, Alan Thompson: “We’ve been talking about Mark Spitz for thirty-six years now. I don’t know if I’m going to be alive when they stop talking about this bloke. You wonder if we are going to see someone as good as this again.”

  I got whisked to a news conference in the basement of the Water Cube. In those moments after we’d won the medley, it dawned on me that my life had abruptly moved into a new and completely different phase. President Bush called, and said, “If you can handle eight gold medals, you can handle anything.” I’d been told that our medley swim had been shown on the big screens at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore after the Ravens faced the Minnesota Vikings in a preseason NFL game; more than 10,000 people stayed to watch us win. The Associated Press had filed a “flash” onto the wire when the medley ended with us winning; the AP uses a “flash” only for what it believes is a “tr
anscendent development,” which through the years has meant such occasions as the shooting of President Kennedy, the first moon landing, the falling of the Twin Towers.

  And now—for swimming.

  I was, as I said in my first comments at this news conference—held in a basement of the Water Cube, the room hot and sweaty, packed beyond full with reporters and cameras—“fairly speechless.” I tried to explain: “This is all a dream come true,” seeing as my main goal was to raise the sport of swimming as “high as I can get it.” Besides the Ravens game, I said, I’d heard they had made an announcement at Yankee Stadium when I’d won the 100 fly. The St. Louis Cardinals had held up their team bus back to the hotel in Cincinnati so the players and coaches could watch us win the medley. “People all over the place are saying it’s crazy. They’re out to eat, the TV is on and swimming is on. I think the goal that I have and I’m working toward is in progress…I think it’s really just starting to get more of an awareness for the sport in the United States. By far, it’s already starting. It started four years ago. With the help of my team and the coaching staff, I think this sport can take off even more than it is. That’s a goal that isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to happen over time and that’s something I’m going to be in the long run for.”

  I tried, too, to explain why my emotions surfaced so much more in Beijing, there for everybody to see on live television, than they had in Athens: “I’ve dreamed of a lot of things. I’ve written down a lot of goals; this was the biggest one I ever really wrote down. Sort of thinking of all the memories I’ve had through my career to get here, with my family, my friends, my coaches—my coach, I’ve really only had one coach—everything I’ve gone through. It’s—I guess my mom and I still joke about it, I was in middle school and I had a teacher say I’d never be successful. It’s little things like that. It’s stuff like that you think back to and it’s just fun. I saw my mom for a minute and we just hugged. She started to cry. I started crying. My sisters started crying. It has been a really fun week and I’m really glad to accomplish everything I wanted to.”