Michael Phelps

Michael Phelps’ Olympic medal count is one of those crazy statistics that is good to look at. But more importantly it is the observation of an incredible athletic journey.

To me, he is the greatest and I don’t see anyone surpassing his awesome tally. He did it at three Olympics.

To accumulate those many medals, you would have to be a swimmer, number one, and secondly you would have to do it over four editions of the Games. And even then it would be almost impossible.

Right now, Phelps is on a cruise controlHe swam the semi-finals of the butterfly Thursday half-a-second faster than the next guy, so he is obviously coming off a high.

After the 200m individual medley, which he won, there was a sense of relief on his face.

His face was saying something… there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

But at the end of the tunnel there’s also the flashing lights of Rio de Janeiro. And I think that Phelps will probably take some time off to cut loose. But if he is wise he’ll go into a modified programme to stay in shape and we may see him in the 100m butterfly in 2016.

Phelps loves to set records, and he’ll be the one who wants to win more medals at the age of 31.

I think that will happen... Either that (100m butterfly) or he’s going to take up skeet shooting, which is not as physical! But we’ll see him in Rio somehow!

I’m convinced that it would have been much more of a race in the 200m individual medley had Ryan Lochte, the world record holder, not swum the 200m backstroke and got bronze only 30 minutes earlier.

I would have rather won one gold medal against Phelps in the individual medley, in which Lochte got the silver, and passed up swimming the 200m backstroke altogether.

If you look at the two of them and what they have been able to accomplish so far, they’re basically going head to head: they’ve each won an individual gold medal.

But I would hesitate to say I feel sorry for Ryan Lochte. At the end of the day, these are incredible guys who are setting new standards for being at the top of their game in so many different events.

We need look at them from a realistic point of view.

There are a lot of athletes in the world who are striving to even get to the Olympic Games. And then there are others who are rising above the script. Those too are remarkable stories:

For example, South Africa’s Chad Le Clos, who idolised Phelps, beat him in the 200m butterfly the same way the Amercian defeated Serbia’s Milorad Cavic in the 100 metres butterfly in Beijing.

The same thing happened last Sunday.

If the Americans won the gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay in 2008 ahead of France, the French exacted revenge this time.

What goes around comes around! DPA/ TCM