A View From the Bleacher

By Peter Robins-Brown

As regular readers of this column may have gathered, I’m not the biggest fan of the Olympics.

It’s not that I’m unpatriotic. I just don’t really enjoy watching gymnastics, or badminton, or beach volleyball. I guess I’m just a product of modern America. I love baseball, football and basketball, but have a hard time enjoying the more, shall we say, esoteric sports.

So, every four years I am forced to endure being inundated with Olympic minutiae that I have absolutely no interest in. I say this not to complain. I understand how others are rabidly interested, and I bear them no grudge for feeling that way. I only point it out because when something happens in the Olympics that piques my interest that means it has transcended the games to such an extent that even a cold, cynical heart like mine can appreciate it.

This summer, the events that have forced their way into my consciousness have been the mind-boggling performances by Michael Phelps (although that might just be because you can’t go two minutes without hearing his name mentioned). Phelps not only broke every record for gold medals garnered, he did it in such dominant fashion that he might as well have been in the pool by himself.

While watching the swimming competitions I wondered to myself: How do the other swimmers feel? Phelps was racing people who had spent years of their lives preparing for this moment, just as he had. Unlike him, though, they entered the pool with essentially no chance of winning. Their years of hard work and sacrifice rendered nil by the American uber-swimmer.

By the time Phelps was winning his fourth gold medal it had become apparent that, barring catastrophe, nothing was going to stop him from breaking the hallowed Olympic records he had set out to conquer. And that actually made the rest of the competitions almost anti-climactic. That is, until the photo-finish race that led the Serbian team to launch a protest.

In the end, Phelps will go down as the greatest Olympic athlete of all time. Eight gold medals in one year’s games, all of which came with either Olympic or world records attached, sets a standard that athletes will probably be chasing for decades. And his 14 overall golds are a mark others will be striving for who knows how long.

Phelps’ accomplishments have been something every American can relish. For one week, everyone was able to forget about the continuing struggles of our country and bask in the glow of true greatness. Even the most hard-hearted of us.