So is Michael Phelps the greatest Olympian of all time?

I suppose there are two safe answers. Yes and no.

Dangle a 36-year old Olympic record before a go-getting 23-year old swimming scud missile from Baltimore, Maryland and you get a riveting nine-day odyssey. Phelps tried to deflect early pressure by saying it was primarily the media, which wanted him to break the record Mark Spitz set in 1972. It was media hype, not personal ambition, according to Phelps. It was, however, clear upon his first taste of Beijing gold that the super shark wanted more. He wanted it all. Eight gold medals for 8 events. This means Phelps wasn’t just aiming for domination. He wasn’t just going for intimidation. Here was an athlete ambitious enough to target perfection in an ultra-competitive field.

Perfection

To go 8 for 8 in 2008, there was no room for error - technical or tactical. Any miscue had to compensate with superhuman effort, or else, Phelps will lose sight of the target.

Then again, even without sight, Phelps showed he could still win. In the 200-meter butterfly finals, Phelps realized water was entering his goggles, not at the end, not in the middle, but at the start of the race. He raced blind. And did it in blinding speed. This was akin to driving a Ferrari, full-throttle, on the Autobahn right smack in the treacherous eye of a raging typhoon, without windshield wipers. Phelps, no vision and all, stepped on the gas pedal, floored it and let it rip for a new world record and another gold medal.

To achieve perfection, Phelps also needed superhuman teammates he could rely on. Aquaman needed friends too. Enter Jason Lezak. When our primary protagonist seemed doomed in the final of the 4×100m relay, Lezak summoned every ounce of fighting atom in his 32-year old body to overtake French Submariner Alain Bernard in the final lap by a whisker.

Perfection also demanded an incalculable amount of luck. To win over Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by one hundredth of a second in the 100m butterfly final isn’t necessary about skill. It’s about having the swimming gods place six-figure bets on you to win eight gold medals in Beijing. That kind of one-sided luck; the kind of luck even super slow-motion replays couldn’t debunk.

It must be said that Aquaman’s success in Beijing was helped by space-age technology. With body suits straight out of NASA and a swimming pool designed like a Formula One racetrack, one can argue that this wasn’t a feat made by human strength but by scientific breakthrough. Sure, that’s a valid point. But any regular joe shmoe who has ever put on the latest Air Jordans knows dunking the ball is never about the shoes. The shoes can only help only if you can dunk in the first place.

That Phelps can join multiple events in the Olympics also fuels another debate. Isn’t it rather unfair that Phelps had a shot at the title “Greatest Performance in a Single Olympic Games” because he had eight events to join? What about boxers? What about basketball players? What about synchronized swimmers? Again, this is a valid point. Some Olympians do have more opportunities to win medals than others.

Quantity vs Quality

It’s at this point that I wish to divert the argument on greatness from a medal-driven context to a performance-based standpoint. Quantity vs quality. By virtue of winning 8 gold medals in Beijing (all in record-breaking fashion) and owning 14 combined gold medals in the Olympics, Phelps has every right to stand on a pedestal, be head and shoulders above everyone else and exist as an Olympic immortal. He has my conditional vote anyway - pending an inspection of the V8 engine suspected to have been placed in his torso.

Still, I also believe greatness isn’t always measured in gold. Take Dara Torres for intance. Torres competed in her 5th Olympic Games (a record for American swimmers) and won two silver medals at 41 years old. Who would have the nerve to call this a failure? If we had the time and resources to find similar stories across all sports and all teams in Beijing, we’re sure to find similar stories of success.

So while Aquaman will get the global admiration he richly deserves, there are others who will scale their personal great walls in Beijing and succeed, away from media scrutiny, far removed from worldwide consciousness. To the olympic gods, they will be just as phenomenal, heroic and inspiring. Just don’t expect the olympic gods to bet against Phelps in 2012.