Sports

Michael Phelps is on a role to winning as many gold medals as he can during this years Olympics. He has been dubbed the USA’s star swimmer and has won two more gold medals - which now brings his total to 11.

The first number puts him within three golds of breaking Mark Spitz’s hallowed record of seven in one Olympics; the second gives him two more golds than any Olympic athlete. ”It’s everything I ever dreamed about,” Phelps said. “On the podium I kept tearing [thinking] back at it. I’m almost at a loss for words …
“From now on, it’s just a downward slope,” Phelps said. “The end is close. I love it.”’

Phelps won the 200 meter butterfly, and once again he left the world’s best swimmers looking like they needed water wings and flippers, breaking his own world record, in 1:52.03. Then he gave the U.S. a huge lead in the first leg of the 4×200 freestyle relay, and Gold No. 11 was never in doubt. Phelps wound up with his fifth world record of this Olympics, as Peter Vanderkaay touched in 6:58.56, about four and a half seconds faster than the previous record.

The 11 golds move Phelps clear of Spitz, Carl Lewis, Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi and Russian gymnast Larysa Latynina for the most Olympic golds; each collected nine. “I’m just really pumped about the relay,” Phelps said. “We talked about breaking seven minutes, and we did it.” Of the butterfly, he said, “I couldn’t see anything for the last 100. “My goggles pretty much filled up with water. It just kept getting worse and worse through the race and I was having trouble seeing the walls, to be honest.

“But it’s fine, I wanted to break the record. I wanted to go 1:51 or better, but for the circumstances I guess it’s not too bad.” No, not even water can stop Phelps. Polish swimmer Pawel Korzeniowski, after finishing sixth in the butterfly, was told that Phelps was about to compete in the 4c200 meter relay.

“He has a relay today?” Korzeniowski said. “Oh, my God. I don’t know how he’s doing it. I think about, ‘How he do this — and set the world record?’ “I tried to push him, but he’s too fast.”