This is not going to be another article to wax lyrical praises on the guy, there's already many floating around on the net, the print media, TV, etc.. but rather to give a different perspective of his achievement of being titled the Greatest Olympian ever.
As of 12 August, he has won 3 gold medals at Beijing Olympics, making a total of 10 gold medals from all his Olympics appearances. And for that he has been coveted as the Greatest Olympian ever. But wait a minute. I don't think so. "Why?" you may ask? Maybe some just say I'm just envious of this guy's anchievement. Nope. What I envy about him is his nicely toned body, and not much else.
You see all of his golds are from one sport only, swimming. That got me thinking, so what's the fuss? Compare that with something like football. There's only ONE bloody gold medal offered for football compared to the SEVERAL HUNDREDS being offered for swimming. And these guys have to play and win SEVERAL matches before they can win the gold. Why not have football played over 30 minutes instead of the normal 90? And another variant played over 10 minutes, or 120 minutes, or 300 minutes or anything in between. And then also throw in a variant for match played in half sized field, double size, quarter size. Then also variants for number of players, instead of normal 11 players, also have 9-a-side, 7-a-side, 20-a-side. And better still a creative combination of the above.
You may say, "Why would we want to that?" I would ask, "Why not?" That's what being done for swimming (and track athletics for that matter). 50m free style, then 100m, then 200m. Then 50m butterfly, 100m, 200m, 400m, etc.. Then we have 50m going backwards, 100m, 200, 1000m, etc.. Then they even have medley events with combination of the above! Of course there's a lot of golds to be won!
As i said, they're all practically, swimming. So when he does weighttraining in the gym for his shoulders, upper arms and back, he'll improve for all styles. Free-style, butterfly, back-stroke, whatever. Same when he's working on his stamina and cardio. It'll improve all. I admit, there's a difference in techniques and skills between the various styles, but not totally different. Not like between swimming and fencing kind of different.
So unless, he won his golds in swimming, another one in boxing, another one for shooting, another for track running, another in gymnastics, badminton, tennis, etc.. etc.. I would only call him "The greatest Olympic swimmer ever!", no doubt about that. But to go as far to call him the greatest Olympian ever, I don't think so. Not until a day when someone wins like 10 gold medals from 10 different sports. Not just 'variants' of the same sport.
OK flame me for that.
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