Re: 2008 Summer Olympics - Beijing, China
I'm glad I've been able to raise some debate about Mr Phelps, and interesting to see the contrasting viewpoints. The fact remains that for the last thirty or so years, there have been individual swimmers capable of gaining medals across several official race distances. You simply don't find this in other sports [the nearest is probably someone like Carl Lewis, but even he didn't get near Phelps's total]. Sorry, but this indicates that in terms of determining differences between individuals, these races are too similar. The statistics clearly show that this can't be gainsaid. To give an analogy - suppose you claim that skills A, B and C are totally different and you devise tests A, B and C to test them, and you then find that the same people who are good at test A are also equally good at tests B and C. This means that skills A, B and C are strongly related, not different, as originally claimed. Now if Mr P had, for example, won golds in both sprint and endurance events, that would be radically different, because this is something very much rarer.None of this robs Mr P of his rightful place as a great sportsman and swimmer. To reiterate - he is a superb swimmer, one of the best of all time, and a great shining example to the sport (and I mean that sincerely). All it does is question whether the swimming authorities should have quite as many races. But 'greatest Olympian' implies something truly special, beyond a tally of how many medals have been won (and certainly beyond winning races four years apart in events proven to be very similar) and also, beyond being simply the best in your sport. And I think over the years, there have been several Olympians who have been more inspirational or special and who have transcended simply being good at their particular sport. Inevitably, we will each have our own views on this. FWIW, my vote would be for Bob Beaman. For me, that single jump represents all that can be inspirational and memorable when someone is prepared to stretch themselves beyond what experts and authority figures have said should be possible. Perhaps the shock and awe of that jump has faded now, but placed in the context of the time, it was sensational. But certainly, it transcended the sport of long jumping, and became symbolic of something more. Others might with good reason choose Jessie Owens, not only for his achievements, but also for accomplishing these at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, thereby neatly undermining all the propaganda about Aryan physical supremacy.
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| No offense Andrew, and I know you and I go round and round on this (so I accept the barbs thrown my way). However, when your first, last and basically only comments in this thread are either critical of American athletes or critical of American fans whom you automatically assume are USA-centric (which in this case couldn't be further from the truth), then in all honesty you should probably look to your own biases before criticizing mine. |
