Michael Phelps Is The Greatest Olympian Of All Time - Page 7

Water polo is pretty hard. 

He didn't run the entire race and still won, guys a fucking machine.

I don't disagree, he's a machine and he's the greatest sprinter ever.

But with that title he's not just racing against Yohan Blake or Justin Gatlin, he's competing against history. And when his records are broken (not if, but when), peeps aren't going to be like, oh yeah, but Usain coasted the last three meters so he *could* have posted a faster time. To me, its about the time you *actually* post.

And I get it, some cat earlier said that's his "steez".... ok, fine. Personally, I just would have preferred that his "steez" was to post a time so ridiculous that it would take generations for it to be matched.

World records aren't just set during the Olympics though. He just needs to run full out and in perfect form in the WCs every once and a while and he'll hit his best possible time. More fun for us when he does that in the Olympics, but alas.

Think this will be his next move, he'll be too old and bored by Rio for 100 or 200m and its all he has left at that distance TBH, set a record which outlives himself, obviously we don't know but 9.58 doesn't look good enough to do that.

The Olympics schedules are set up based on TV audiences, in London the climate and the race being on late for American viewers means its too cold for record setting, in Rio when its warmer anyway and on earlier for the European audiences

Didn't Costas bring up Idi Amin during the Parade of Athletes? I mean, what kind of a fwocking dooshbag brings up a dictator who has been out of office for
decades? Was he drunk?

"Here comes the American team, it's a good thing they've stopped the wholesale slaughter of their indigenous tribes so they can focus on these games."

When the German team came out there was a guy in front of Boris Johnson giving Nazi salutes.

here's my pantheon:

level 1: Karelin, May/Walsh

level 2: Bolt, Phelps

Oh come on man. May/Walsh are clutch volleyball players and born winners, but you can't put them up there with with athletes who dominated highly competetive sports that require superhuman athleticism.

You would be correct.

undefeated in 3 Olympics and 12 years. 42-1 in sets. that's a better record than Karelin.

that is insanely difficult, And dominant. who else has gone that long without even losing a set, or round, or equivalent? Karelin is the only one that comes close with 0 points allowed for a decade, although he did lose his final match. Phelps has lost a fair amount of races.

Bolt is superhuman but you could make a counter argument by saying he's a world class sprinter whose stride length (needs to take less steps to cover same ground) made him superhuman, without that he's not as dominant. not saying I believe that, just that you can make that argument

That's the thing though, it was conventionally thought that tall sprinters could never be fast. Ordinarily their stride frequency is so much lower than the shorter sprinters that they can't compete, but Bolt is different somehow. I know the physics people were really trying to figure him out back in 2008, not sure if they did.

 

That's probably it. So is pulling up once you've beat everyone else in the spirit of the olympics.  Does it disqualify him from "greatest olympian"?

 

lefty