More Phelps

Some followup. Michael Phelps continues to rack up medals and break world records. The FINA World Championships in Australia are done, and Phelps had hoped to get eight gold medals, but instead he has to settle for seven (boo-hoo). The last medal was a medley, which requires four swimmers, and one of his rivals and teammates, Ian Crocker, had left 0.01 of a second too soon. I mean, you'd think they could simply penalize this time at the end, though certainly it creates problems if everyone is doing this.

Phelps had beaten Ian in some previous event.

Let's just say his accomplishments have been amazing, and the media can hardly overstate this. Indeed, they have a hard time getting enough enthusiasm for this. Why? Lance Armstrong, another sports figure who has resonated with the American public, has succeeded where Phelps has not. Why?

There are several reasons for this. First, Lance won over many, many years. Each year, they would go back to the Tour de France, and each year, Lance would win. The public probably didn't even follow Lance until after he won his third Tour. That's just how much people cared (or didn't) about the Tour.

Second, Lance is a cancer survivor, so there is a secondary story that people can relate too. Many people know of someone else that are cancer survivors.

Third, the Tour de France runs over several weeks, and there is coverage on OLN (which didn't happen until he was roughly on his fifth win). People could watch it live, and it would last a few hours. As people learned more about the race, they could figure out its nuances. There are even nutty situations where the spectators are literally inches from the riders, and at any point, they could knock over a competitor.

Let's face it, the Tour, as is, would never happen in the US, at least, if we cared about the sport to any degree. Athletes would want to be protected from rabid fans. Indeed, a French rider of some repute, Eddie Merckx, lost a title because someone knocked him off his bike. And Eddie was French!

On the other hand, swimming takes only a few minutes, if even that. It's like watching track and field. It's over quickly. So we can appreciate the import of the event, even if lacks the kind of drama that racing can have (in particular, last year's win by Floyd Landis had him make up some 8 minutes in one day, with only about two days left in the event, which is practically unheard of. Most people thought Landis was done for, and to make up that time was not possible. When he did, there was some question of doping).

His accomplishments seem less notable than Mark Spitz, the guy he's most often compared to. There's a reason for that. First, Mark Spitz won in the 70s, when there was no cable TV. The Olympics, when it was on, had a huge, captive audience. And they loved it. These days, the Olympics are meh.

Mark Spitz was also something of a golden boy. Just as Chris Evert was not only successful for her excellent play that made her one of the two players you think of during the late 70s and 80s (the other being Martina), she was also noted for being good looking. Spitz had that 1970s good look, where folks like Tom Selleck and Burt Reynolds--guys with moustaches, seemed something like men's men (though not John Wayne types).

Let's face it, Michael Phelps looks rather wiry, and still very much like a kid. And there's a tendency for one white swimmer to look like another. Put Ian Thorpe side by side with Phelps, and you'd probably find the average person unable to decide who is who!

And, unlike Spitz, Phelps didn't even break these records at the Olympics! True, the World Championships are no small deal, but it's not the Olympics.

I'm starting to read a touch more about Phelps, that he's a bit of a jokester, and he's hugely into rap music, which just goes to show you the crossover influence of rap for white audiences (he is from Baltimore, which has a rather large African American population). Still, it's amazing how little I know about this guy, even though I've heard of him for years.