Quote:
Originally Posted by yellowmac
To me, I think Phelps beats out Bolt by a very close margin. Yes, I agree, Bolt's performance at these games was superhuman and amazing. I will wonder just how fast he could have run the 100m had he sprinted 100% of the race, instead of coasting the last 10%. However, Bolt's event is just running, putting one foot in front of the other as fast as possible. Phelps won 8 golds in swimming, sure, but they were in freestyle, butterfly, IM, relays, etc. The all-around excellence in different swimming techniques is what gives him the edge in my view.
Of course, I do hope that they both compete and succeed in 2012.
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I see what you are saying but given how people like Spitz and Thorpe have done similar things, so what Phelps has done - while remarkable - isn't really surprising. Had he not achieved 8 medals, it actually might have been more of a shock.
Also, many, many WR were broken in the pool due to the technology of both the pool and the suits, and many racers got close to Phelps.
What Bolt has done is utterly unprecedented. Only Jesse Owens has similar achievements to his name (prior to the Berlin Olympics he set 3 or 4 world records in one day) but to be fair, track was not as competitive then as it is today. No one got close to Bolt - he utterly destroyed the fields, and in the 100, without seemingly trying very hard. The scale of this achievement is fantastic. 3 WR in the same games is off the charts in the modern era and worldwide, more people care about this than Phelps.
I would venture to say that had Bolt been American we would not be having this conversation, such would the media saturation by NBC, etc be.
And Strange, yeah fair point about Dibaba - I watched Bekele's races a lot more closely and was so amazed at how fast he finished. As a recreational/age group runner I silently compare my times at various distances to his and realize jus how much faster he is than me, it blows my mind! I can relate to Bolt - I've run low 11s in high school so I can at least understand 9.69, but moving into middle distance running these guys are so much faster than me it's like they're from another planet. I'm running 25 minutes for the 5KM and these guys are pounding it out in 13 minutes!