He’s the greatest of them all

When Phelps finished his laps — a world record in the 200-metre butterfly — he ripped off the goggles, threw them on the pool deck, and spent the next few minutes annoyingly squinting water out of his eyes. This is silly. This is beyond silly.

“This is miraculous,” said Poland’s Pawel Korzeniowski.

Michael Phelps cannot only win gold medals streaking through the fastest pool in the world, he can win them as if splashing around the YMCA. He cannot only win them with biomemetic fabric on his body, he can win them with chlorine in his eyes. He cannot only win them brutishly, he can win them blind.

And he can win them twice in one day, which is what happened Wednesday, which dredges up an entirely different set of metaphors. At 10:21 am, he won a gold medal in the 200-metre butterfly. At 11:19 am, he won another gold medal as part of the 800m freestyle relay.

He won the most coveted individual sports award in the world twice in less time that it would take most of us to even put on his bathing suit.

It’s as large as 11 Olympic gold medals in his career, two more than anyone in any sort of Olympics, winter, spring, summer or fall. But the only number that matters, it seems, is eight. With five gold medals already around his neck here, can he survive the whiplash required to win three more, breaking legend Mark Spitz’s single-Olympic record?

Wednesday proved it. Wednesday clinched it. The deal is done. Everyone around here with wet hair agrees.

“I think he wins eight medals, yes,” said Korzeniowski, who finished sixth in the 200 butterfly. “Everyone says: ‘How does he do this?’ But still, he does this.”

To complete his mission, Phelps has to win a 200 individual-medley race in which he is the world-record holder, a 100-butterfly race in which he has been faster than rival Ian Crocker all year, and a 400-medley relay that the Americans have never lost in a non-boycotted Olympics.

He needs none of it, however, to win America. That’s been done already, Phelps capturing the country’s attention this week by being not only great, but goofy. With his buzz haircut and oversized ears and crooked grin, he looks refreshingly like any other 23-year-old. Once on the pool deck, he acts like one.

When he came out of the water after winning the 200 butterfly Wednesday, he was shouting like a waterlogged kid who was yelling for his mother. “I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t see a thing,” he shouted.

He later explained, saying: “I couldn’t see anything for the last 100, my goggles pretty much filled up with water. It just kept getting worse and worse through the race and I was having trouble seeing the walls, to be honest.”

Having trouble seeing the walls? Isn’t that something that happens during the Little Mermaid class?

“For the circumstances, I guess it’s not too bad,” Phelps said of his world-record 1:52:03.

Not too bad? Just ask New Zealand’s Moss Burmester, who led the race after one lap but then was swallowed up in Phelps’s tidal wave, finishing fourth.

“I went as fast as I could go, I was trying to hang on, but I just couldn’t hang on,” he said.

After his first win, Phelps went from the pool to the medal stand to the pool, barely having time to dry off before jumping back in as the first leg of the 800 freestyle relay. He gave the team a huge lead, and then he really got serious, climbing out of the water to pound the starting block and scream at his team mates as they finished five seconds in front of second-place Russia.

“It’s the funnest thing, being part of a team,” he said. How can you not love a guy who uses the word “funnest?”

How can you not love a guy who, at the end of Thursday’s news conference, pulled out his Blackberry and read reporters what he considered an important text message from a high school friend.

“Dude, it’s ridiculous how many times I have to see your ugly face.” Phelps smiled and read another text message from the same friend. “It’s time to be the best ever.” His eyes clear, he slowly nodded.

Rice completes double

Australia’s Stephanie Rice completed a golden Olympic individual medley double with the tightest of victories in world record time in the 200 metres on Wednesday. Rice, who won the 400 medley on Sunday, prevailed in a duel with Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry on the final freestyle leg, clocking two minutes, 8.45 seconds to slice 0.47 from the 2:08.92 world mark she set in Sydney in March.

Rice, 20, is the first female swimmer to win two gold medals at the Beijing Olympics after she also broke the world record to win the 400 individual medley.

“I feel great, it’s so good I pulled through. I felt a little sick last night but I was up for the challenge and tried to get the best out of myself,” Rice said.

She succeeds Ukraine’s Yana Klochkova, who completed the same double in both 2000 and 2004 but after a dip in form did not defend her titles in Beijing, where she is swimming the relays.