michael phelps 7th gold

Posted by Yuka as Famous

Wow! Phelps wins 7th gold by slimmest marginPosted on Sat, Aug. 16, 2008
By Sports NetworkThe Sports NetworkAnd just like that Michael Phelps was there.
It doesn’t get any closer.

Trailing until a final lunge to the wall, Phelps secured his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Olympics and a spot in history when he beat Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by just .01 seconds to win the 100-meter butterfly on Saturday.

Phelps tied Mark Spitz’s record from the 1972 Munich Games of most gold medals at one Olympics, touching the wall in 50.58 seconds for a new Olympic record — the first time he’s won here without also setting a world mark.

The American-born Cavic finished at 50.59, one-hundredth of a second behind Phelps.
You can’t win by any less.

“I had no idea it was that close,” Phelps said before taking to the medal stand at the National Aquatic Center for the seventh time in eight days.

Already the winningest Olympian ever with 13 career gold medals, Phelps has only one race left to set the gold medal record for one Olympics: the 400- meter medley relay, where he and his U.S. teammates are overwhelming favorites.

“It’s not over yet,” Phelps said — and if anyone would know that, it’s him.
Phelps was seventh out of eight swimmers after the first 50 meters — a disaster for anyone else — and he needed a 26.54 final split to beat Cavic.

He only caught the swimmer on his left with a bit of good luck: Cavic ended the race with a gliding finish while Phelps collided with the wall in the middle of a stroke.

When he saw that he had won — it took a moment for the board to post the finish positions — he threw his left arm in the air. He smashed his hands down on the water and screamed.

“Beforehand, [coach Bob Bowman] said it would be good for me if I lost,” Phelps recounted. “Wen he said that, I was fired up. I said, ‘I’m going to go for it.’

“And when I saw that finish I said, ‘wow.’”
Fans in a packed National Aquatics Center erupted when the screen flashed the swimmers’ times. It was the loudest the Water Cube has been in eight days of swimming here.

“I came wanting to win as many races as I could, getting as many personal bests I could,” said Phelps. “I have seven out of seven so far. I don’t know what to say.”
Australia’s Andrew Lauterstein, who won the bronze medal in 51.12 seconds, didn’t know where he was running in the race. He just knew that he wasn’t the one winning it.
“It was just a great race to be a part of, just a spectacle,” said Lauterstein. “Words can’t describe my feelings.”

Phelps’ U.S. teammate and chief rival in the event, world record holder Ian Crocker, finished a disappointing fourth in 51.13 seconds — more than a half- second slower than Phelps in his only event in Beijing.
Crocker was running second after swimming a 23.70 split over the first 50 meters, but he came back in 27.43 seconds — the fourth-best time over the last 50.

He lost the gold to Phelps at the 2004 Athens Olympics, set the world record of 50.40 at a meet in Montreal in 2005, and has been beaten by Phelps in just about every big race since then.