By JASON STALLMAN
Published: August 12, 2008
BEIJING — The United States 4x200-meter freestyle
relay team smashed the world record on Wednesday morning, helping
Michael Phelps keep his gold-medal streak alive. The relay victory, in
6:58.56, helped Phelps earn his fifth medal of these Games, as he
attempts to break Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals in one
event, which Spitz set in 1972.
Earlier in the night, Phelps had earned his fourth gold medal with a
world-record performance in the 200-meter butterfly.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Doug Mills/The New York Times
From left, Ricky Berens, Ryan Lochte and Michael
Phelps react to their world-record victory in the 4x200-meter freestyle
relay.
Multimedia
Audio Slide Show
Photographer's Journal : Capturing History at the Water Cube
Interactive Schedule
Olympics TrackerFollow the schedules of your favorite sports, day by day and event by event.
var so = new SWFObject('http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/sports/olympics/OLYMPICS_TRACKER/promo190.swf','nytSWF',190,99,9,'#FFFFFF');
so.addParam('BASE','http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/sports/olympics/OLYMPICS_TRACKER/');
so.addParam('allowScriptAccess','always');
so.write('olyvuPromoDiv190');
#olyvuPromoDiv190{visibility:visible !important;}
Times journalists and special contributors explore the Olympics in
Beijing and on the Web from every angle — the politics, the culture and
the competition.
- The Rings RSS Feed | Atom
Go to the Rings Blog »
Olympics 2008Go to Complete Coverage »
Phelps swam the opening leg,
giving his teammates a substantial advantage. Ryan Lochte, Ricky Berens
and Peter Vanderkaay continued to add to the lead, becoming the first
relay team to break the 7-minute barrier, and beating the old record of
7:03.24.
Competing in the 200-meter butterfly Wednesday morning
at the Water Cube — an inhospitable place to anyone who has dared dive
in with Phelps — he captured his fourth gold medal of the Beijing
Olympics and continued his march toward a record eight golds. He had
less than an hour to take the podium and then rest before his next
event, the 4x200 freestyle relay, scheduled for 11:19 a.m. local time.
Phelps finished in 1 minute 52.03 seconds, topping his world record of
1:52.09. Laszlo Cseh of Hungary won silver in 1:52.70, and Takeshi
Matsuda of Japan took bronze in 1:52.97.
If Phelps remains unbeaten, on Saturday morning he will catch Mark Spitz, who holds the record with seven golds at the 1972 Munich Games, and will pass him on Sunday morning in the 4x100 medley relay.
With each lap in the pool, Phelps has commanded more attention on the Olympic Green and around the world. NBC,
the Olympics rights holder in the United States, knew such a run of
golds would be great theater, so it prevailed on the Games’ organizers
to hold swimming
finals in the mornings in Beijing to capture live prime-time audiences
in the States. The time of day has not appeared to matter to Phelps,
who will be the heavy favorite in each of his remaining races.
In
the 200-meter freestyle Tuesday, he left the field far behind and
crushed his own year-old record. Sixteen months after becoming the
first swimmer to crack the 1:44 barrier, he was the first to go under
1:43.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/sports/olympics/13michaelweb.html?hp
Accueil 
