BOLT V PHELPS
Who was the greatest athlete of the 2010s?
We will never see his like again. Or his. Usain Bolt’s and Michael Phelps’ world record times will someday be erased. That’s evolution, baby.
What will never be surpassed is the way they won. Won everything in sight, until the only conclusion to be drawn was that we had witnessed the greatest athlete and swimmer of all time.
The winning began in the 2000s. It spanned well into the 2010s, somehow surviving past their genuine prime, and it will live forever in the memories of those who were fortunate enough to see it.
Bolt: Nine Olympic gold medals, albeit one stripped due to a rogue relay teammate. The sprint triple – 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay – won at three consecutive Olympics; Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016.
It is absurd, that a man can remain the fastest on the planet for so long. It seems likely that it will never be repeated at Olympic level, let alone bettered.
Phelps won nearly three times as many gold medals as Bolt. Triple the three-time treble winner. Outrageous.
Phelps won 23 gold medals and 28 Olympic medals in all, with three silvers and two bronzes. He is 14 gold medals clear of the next most prolific champions in
Olympic history: Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi, US athletics icon Carl Lewisand fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz, all with nine golds. Phelps, or course, took Spitz’s seven gold medals from the Munich 1972 Olympics and raised him one, winning eight from as many events at Beijing 2008. He won as many Olympic gold medals at that single Games as Bolt did in his entire career. Having won six gold at Athens 2004, that gave Phelps a total of 14 and by the 2010s, breaking modern Olympic records was passe.
By again dominating at London 2012 and Rio 2016, winning four and five gold respectively, Phelps surpassed ancient history. He finished with 14 individual Olympic championships, which broke Leonidas of Rhodes’ Ancient Olympics record of 12 – set 2168 years earlier, at the 152BC Games.
Leonidas of Rhodes, incidentally, was a sprinter. He won an individual sprint treble at four consecutive Games. As great as he and Bolt were, two millennia apart, Phelps put them both in the shade when it came to sheer volume of titles.
Phelps was the most successful athlete at four successive Olympics and became the first swimmer to win the same individual event – the 200m individual medley – four times. Only US athletes Al Oerter (discus) and Carl Lewis (long jump) had previously won four consecutive Olympic golds in the same individual event.
PHELPS’ 2010s: DEPRESSION AND GLORY
For all the fame and accolades, Phelps’ journey through the second decade of his career was brutal. After his historic feats at Beijing 2008, he went through a major lull in motivation to the point that he barely wanted to compete at London 2012.
He had his worst Games and afterwards fell into serious depression. At his worst, he stayed in his room for four days straight, not sleeping or eating. He became suicidal.
‘‘I didn’t want to be in the sport anymore,’’ he said in 2018, at a mental health conference.
‘‘I didn’t want to be alive … You do contemplate suicide. After every Olympics I think I fell into a major state of depression.’’
He insisted after London, his fourth Olympics, that he was finished in swimming. ‘‘I’m done. I’m finished. I’m retired. I’m done. No more,’’ he said on the American Today Show.
Yet London 2012 was not the end. Phelps revitalised himself for one final shot at the Olympics, rekindling his love for the sport. It was fun – and successful – once again.
At Rio 2016, he became the first swimmer to win an individual event 12 years apart and also the oldest individual swimming champion in history; though teammate Anthony Ervin broke that record three days later.
Phelps was able to bow out on far happier terms than he would have in 2012; he said that the 2016 Games had let him ‘‘feel like a kid again’’.
‘‘It was the cherry on top of the cake that I wanted,’’ he said after his final race, which brought his 23rd gold, in the 4x100m medley relay.
‘‘Just walking into the pool tonight I think everything really started just coming out, the emotions started surfacing. Walking down to the warm-up pool deck, I started to get choked up just thinking, ‘That’s it’.’’
Marking the fully-fledged digital era, Phelps even became a meme during Rio 2016. He a face before his 200m butterfly semi-final against arch-rival, South African, Chad Le Clos, who was shadow-boxing in the waiting area.
It ultimately worked. Phelps went on to win the event for the third time at the Olympics, having taken silver behind Le Clos at London 2012.
‘‘I am trying to be one of the greatest, to be among Ali and Pele... I don’t need to prove anything else. What else can I do to prove to the world I am the greatest?’’
Usain Bolt
BOLT’S 2010s: UNSTOPPABLE, INIMITABLE
Bolt also thought he was done after London 2012, having won the 100m-200m double back-to-back; pushing his younger Jamaican compatriot Yohan Blake to silver in both events.
‘‘It’s what I came here to do. I’m now a legend, I’m also the greatest athlete to live. I am in the same category as Michael Johnson,’’ he said after winning the 200m.
‘‘I think I’ve had my time. In life, anything is possible but that [defending my titles in Rio] is going to be a hard reach.’’
Bolt could have rested on his considerable laurels. He had joined Carl Lewis as the only man to defend the Olympic 100m crown, while no one had ever retained the 200m title.
Bolt achieved the feat despite struggling with a back injury through the preceding season.
But the prospect of immortality, a place in sporting history that transcended athletics, tugged at him.
Bolt ran sparingly and unconvincingly in the lead-up to Rio 2016, but he arrived with the boldest of aims: to once again win the sprint treble and become truly iconic.
While his 100m win at Beijing 2008 was unforgettable, thanks to his chest-slapping celebration as he crossed the finish line in world record time, his Rio 2016 triumph was special for another reason.
He was pitted against a resurgent Justin Gatlin in the 100m, the golden boy of athletics against the convicted drug cheat; fellow Olympic champion though Gatlin was.
It became the most fundamental and alluring sporting narrative: good guy versus bad guy. Even good versus evil, to the most fervent watchers.
Good won. Bolt made a statement in the semis by running the quickest time (9.86sec) and took out the final in 9.81, with Gatlin second (9.89).
Bolt then won the 200m, following a famous semifinal moment with Canadian Andre De Grasse in which he chided his younger rival for trying to run him down as he slowed towards the finish line.
With the triple-double complete, he laid claim to his rightful legacy.
‘‘I am trying to be one of the greatest, to be among Ali and Pele. I hope after these Games I will be in that bracket,’’ he said after the 200m.
‘‘I don’t need to prove anything else. What else can I do to prove to the world I am the greatest?’’
Finally, he again won the 4x100m relay with Jamaica, just to underline his supremacy. He had somehow pulled off the sprint treble at three consecutive Olympics; though Beijing 2008 is marred by a stripped gold, thanks to a positive doping test from relay teammate Nesta Carter.
By Rio 2016, Blake was expected to have surpassed Bolt in the blue-riband sprints. Instead, he did not medal in either event while Bolt remained supreme, eight years after taking the Olympic crowns.
It was an extraordinary defiance of Father Time, seven years after his true prime. Bolt’s world records – 9.58 in the 100m and 19.19 in the 200m, both set at the Berlin 2009 world championships – remain untouched and for now, untouchable.
Bolt was a fabulous face of athletics, immediately recognisable by his tall frame, brilliant smile and trademark lightning bolt celebration. When he ran, it felt as though you were watching something godly.
He was also utterly dominant at the world championships, winning 11 gold medals between
2009 and 2015. Phelps was similarly dominant at world titles level, claiming 26 gold medals; though just four in the 2010s as his activity waned.
It affects not his greatness. He was a giant, physically and metaphorically, in the world’s pools for 15 years. Nearly unbeatable. Scarcely believable.
Phelps is the aquatic Bolt; Bolt the landbound Phelps.
Just when some felt that the Olympics were waning as sport’s shining beacon, these megastars made them more magical than ever.
We will never see their like again.
Wide World of Sports
‘‘I didn’t want to be alive … You do contemplate suicide. After every Olympics I think I fell into a major state of depression.’’
Michael Phelps