How 'bout Michael Phelps?

Question

Michael Phelps just won his 14th gold medal in swimming, but swimming is a strange sport in that you have the ability to swim 8 events and medal in all of them, whereas in gymnastics, track, weightlifting, diving, volleyball, beach volleyball, and all the other olympic sports, you can do only 3 or 4 at the most and most of the time only one in bracket sports like volleyball and basketball. Particularly in sports with brackets like basketball, volleyball, and baseball/softball, there are pools then quarter finals, then semi finals, and then the final game with only one medal to be won, as opposed to many different swimming events yielding many, many medals. No other olympic sport is like that in regards to lots of medals to be won so Phelps' gold medals is all relative to how many events he swam.

Answer 1

I'm tired of reading and answering this same question.

For your additional details.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multime...

Answer 2

Well actually, Men's Gymnastics actually has enough events where someone can also get eight medals.  Team, All-Around, and six individual events.

And they showed a photo of the end of the 100m butterfly race from the bottom of the pool and Michael Phelp's win is actually pretty clear in the photo.

Answer 3

Congratulations to Michael Phelps for his achievement in Olympic.

However, if you looked at the result carefully, you would find that most medals of U.S. swimming teams are those gold by Phelps. Girl teams are totally kicked out of the game.

Further careful, some of Phelps' medals are won by the difference of less than 1 second. In next Olympic, the physical condition of Phelps will be down a bit and Australia will kick him out of the Game.

That means, in coming 2012 London Olympic, U.S. teams may not be able to get any Gold medal in swimming. Australia will be the big winner.

after the Beijing Olympic, U.S. should find a better coach so that they may have a chance in London.

Answer 4

well in the swimming events, they have many heats as well and then semifinals and finals. But yeah smtimes it does get a little boring to watch.

Anyway i think phelps did win 100m butterfly, the reason is that the other guy was indeed a little ahead but he raised up a little too fast, no ones touches the end with their head up so fast, he probably got happy too fast and that 0.01s made a difference. If they had calculated time by a stop watch, then yeah phelps would have lost. There certainly was luck on phelps side.

Answer 5

Yes, you can win more medals in swimming than in any other sport.  Even in track, there are not so many medals to be won.  In track, for instance, you have different distances but not different styles of running as there are 4 different swimming strokes per distance.

Don't get me wrong - 14 medals is a tremendous achievement.  But certainly, an olympic basketball player is not going to be able to win 14 medals.