EVEN A DEMIGOD NEEDS HELP

American swimmer Michael Phelps dominated in Beijing, rewrote Olympic history, and took his place as the transcendent swimmer of this generation; but he got some much-needed help.

Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals in Beijing, and he owes one of it to his teammate, Jason Lezak.

Jason Lezak’s name will likely be a mere footnote in Olympic swimming history, just another member of the powerhouse US swimming team that won a handful of gold medals in Beijing. That team, history will say, was anchored by a demigod named Michael Phelps, who, by winning 8 gold medals, made this Olympics his own personal showcase, his coronation as the world’s greatest swimmer. It is a title that he will presumably hold for a very long time, at least until another freak of nature comes along or until God––blasphemy aside––decides to don one of those hi-tech Speedos.

But history will be remiss, not to mention, unfair, if it fails to highlight what Jason Lezak has done in this Olympics. And all he did was allow his teammate, the aforementioned Phelps, to rewrite Olympic swimming history. Yes, Phelps was otherworldly in this Games, but it was Lezak who kept Phelps’s quest for the Great Eight alive.

Phelps began his historic quest to win 8 gold medals in a single Olympics by dominating the 400 m individual medley in record-shattering fashion. Then came the 4 × 100 meter freestyle relay, said to be the biggest hurdle in Phelps’s run at Olympic history. And 300 meters in, Phelps’s quest seemed destined to end even before it could pick up steam as the French team, anchored by the brash Alain Bernard, held a considerable lead going into the last 100 meters.

The Frenchman, Bernard, had predicted that his team would squash Phelps’s dream by winning this relay, and with 25 meters to go, it sure seemed that he was well on his way to backing up his bold prediction. Michael Phelps’s historic quest was all but over.

Then, Jason Lezak did something about it.

The 32-year-old American turned on his boosters and began a breathtaking, almost surreal, charge to the finish that had his teammates roaring and the crowd buzzing. In the end, it was Lezak who got to the finish line first, barely beating the brash Frenchman by less than a fraction of a second, by a hairline so to speak. With one spectacular surge, Lezak had turned an imminent defeat into an improbable victory, and in the process, he had played his part in rewriting Olympics history.

Lezak’s stunning comeback not only gave the Americans another gold medal in swimming; more importantly, it gave Michael Phelps the chance to continue his pursuit of history, a pursuit which was so close to ending.

Pause for a second and think about the immensity of Lezak’s mad dash to the finish. Without it, Michael Phelps would not have made history. Without it, Phelps would have merely tied Mark Spitz’s 36-year-old Olympic record instead of surpassing it. Without it, Phelps would have left Beijing with seven gold medals and a silver medal––a great haul for an athlete, yes, but Great Eight it is not.

Think, too, about what could have happened had Lezak not surged ahead in that fateful event. Maybe Phelps, dismayed by losing, would not have been as dominant, as machine-like as he was in the subsequent events. Maybe Phelps would not have gone on a record-breaking spree that saw him break five individual world records. Maybe Phelps would not have taken his place as the transcendent swimmer of this generation.

But everything else now is moot and academic. Michael Phelps has made history, and with that, he has taken his place as the transcendent swimmer of this generation. And Phelps knows that he owes a big part of it to Jason Lezak, the man who gave Phelps the chance to rewrite history.

That said, Jason Lezak will still be just a mere footnote to Michael Phelps’s record-shattering conquest, just another swimmer obscured by the giant shadow cast by the greatest swimmer of this generation.