Ok, I love Phelps. He's a tremendous athelete. But...
Come ON already! I'm already tired of him. What I'm most tired of is him being called things like "the greatest olympian ever", "the worlds best athelete" and "Most Gold Medals Ever".
First of all the greatest athlete and Olympian titles seems a pretty heavy title to place on a swimmer. It's not like he also runs track. He's basically amazing at one event. The "Greatest Ever" would need to be good a plethora of events. And NO different strokes don't count as different things.
And although he technically has the most gold medals ever they are all in swimming! Most other athletes only get one shot every 4 years to win 1 gold. Muhammad Ali only got to box once. He didn't get to Box under a whole variety of of boxing type things. Phelps get the possibility of swimming a variety of strokes at a variety of lengths with a variety of team mates.
Here is my new proposed boxing breakdown:
Heavy Weight Singles, 15 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, 10 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, 5 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, Left hand tied behind back, 15 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, Left hand tied behind back, 10 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, Left hand tied behind back, 5 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, Right hand tied behind back, 15 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, Right hand tied behind back, 10 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, Right hand tied behind back, 5 Rounds
Heavy Weight Singles, Medley (1 Round each of standard, left-tied, right-tied then repeat), 15
Heavy Weight Singles, Medley (1 Round each of standard, left-tied, right-tied then repeat), 10
Heavy Weight Singles, Medley (1 Round each of standard, left-tied, right-tied then repeat), 5
Then you move on to Heavy Weight Doubles were partners trade off and do it all over again.
I'd love to have seen Ali or Foreman do this! They'd have gotten dozens of medals at a time. Then again, you'd get so beat up in the first one you'd be tired for the 2nd match. But I guess everyone else would be too. (Don't bother comparing Phelps' crazy schedule to this.) I guess you could change the rounds from 15-10-5 to 5-3-1. That would be short. Swimmers can swim a long way they just arbitrarily stop at 200m. Why not a 1 round boxing sprint?
I think Swimming should be handled like Gymnastics. There should be an all around Gold Medal. I'm more impressed that Phelps won in two consecutive Olympics than I am at the number of medals. I wonder who the true "Greatest Ever" is? It needs to be someone who won like a Gold Medal (in a real event) in 3 consecutive Olympics. Or won Gold in more than one type of event.
And the last word on Phelps: he's an amazing swimmer but lets not forget he's also a drunk driver.
Labels: Olympics