A bottle of bubbly at the end of Phelps’ gold rush?
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BEIJING -- While working out on an elliptical machine Monday morning, I watched Mark Spitz do an interview on CNN International about Michael Phelps’ quest for eight gold medals, which would break Spitz’s Olympics record of seven.
The night before, I had bet a bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne with my good friend Vicki Michaelis of USA Today that the 400-freestyle relay would end -- relatively quickly -- Phelps’ chances of winning eight.
I said the French would beat the United States.
And while I don’t like to count on the French for anything in sports, given their history of being notorious chokers (OK, I know they won the 1998 soccer World Cup, but it was at home and Brazil’s Ronaldo swooned from some illness and was a shell of himself in the final), I noted that Spitz also had mentioned the free relay and the French as a formidable challenge.
This is a roundabout way of bringing up Matt Biondi and the amount of hope NBC has invested in having Phelps’ quest for this holy grail continue for a week so casual U.S. viewers remain interested.
Biondi undertook the Spitz quest in 1988, and NBC also staked a lot on his being to do it. But Biondi won only silver and bronze in his first two races, bursting that balloon, and his eventual five gold medals went almost unnoticed.
So NBC will be holding its breath for the first three competition days of these Olympics, when Phelps faces his biggest challenges.
The first comes from teammate Ryan Lochte in Phelps’ opening event, the 400 individual medley on Day 2. Lochte stayed with Phelps the whole way at the U.S. Olympics trials before losing the 400 by less than a second.
The next comes in what is expected to be the second Phelps event, the final of the 400 free relay on Day 3. While U.S. coaches have not publicly named relay lineups, Phelps is expected to be on that team.
U.S. men won the 400-free relay the first seven times it was held in the Olympics, but they have lost the last two, finishing second to Australia in 2000 and third to South Africa and the Netherlands in 2004.
Even if the U.S. team seems stronger this time, there is also the matter of starts. While they are hardly as perilous as relay baton exchanges in track, false starts do occur. To wit: butterflyer Ian Crocker jumped too soon in the heats of last year’s world championship and cost Phelps an eighth gold medal in that meet.
If the U.S. does win the free relay, I will be giving Vicki some champagne. And maybe we will use it to toast Phelps, because his gold rush will reach historic proportions if he gets past Day 3.
-- Philip Hersh
