Debbie Phelps puts her hand on the USA's Olympic hero and her son Michael Phelps

Debbie Phelps has a hand in sharing son's Olympic glory

Debbie Phelps puts her hand on the USA's Olympic hero and her son Michael Phelps after he completed his goal of winning eight gold medals at the Beijing Games.

BEIJING — Over the last nine days, Debbie Phelps has met President Bush and the First Lady. She's had Kobe Bryant and LeBron James blowing her kisses from across a packed arena.
Friends told her the Baltimore Ravens showed her son swimming on the Jumbotron during a preseason game, that Bruce Springsteen dedicated the song Born in the USA to him during a concert.

And she's watched her son, 23-year-old Michael Phelps, win a record eight Olympic gold medals, the single greatest Olympic performance ever. He also has the most career golds of any Olympian, with 14.

"It's just like, 'Wow.' It's so much to embrace, to put your arms around," she says.

She could do little more over those nine days than give her son a hug and a rub on the head every day as he stopped to say hello while walking around the pool deck with another gold medal hanging around his neck. Each time he gave her the flowers he got on the medals podium — her hotel room now looks like a florist shop.

She's having the flowers preserved, she says. Her son is saving every swim cap, every suit, every pair of goggles and every article of clothing he wore.

"I have the memories, I have pictures, I'll have the medals forever," Phelps says.

He's likely to have the eight-golds record for a very long time. It had been 36 years since Mark Spitz won seven golds at the 1972 Olympics.

"The Olympic Games live on heroes," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said as he left the Water Cube after watching Phelps' final race, in the 4x100-meter medley relay, on Sunday. "How do you compare him to (legendary Finnish runner) Paavo Nurmi? To Jesse Owens? Michael is very high up there, in a very elite league."

It had been eight years since Phelps first put Spitz's mark in his sights. At the 2004 Olympics, Phelps finished just short of it, with six gold and eight bronze medals.

"What he did still is an amazing feat," Phelps says of Spitz, "and will always be an amazing accomplishment in the swimming world and also the Olympics. Being able to have something like that to shoot for, I think, it made those days when you were tired and didn't want to be there and you just wanted to go home and sleep (instead of) work out — it made those days easier."

Phelps made some of his eight victories in Beijing look easy. He lowered his own world record in his first event, the 400-meter individual medley, by more than a second. He won the 200-meter freestyle by nearly two seconds.

Others were nail-biting dramatic. The U.S. men's victory in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay Monday took a superhuman anchor leg by Jason Lezak to pass France. Phelps' victory in the 100-meter butterfly Saturday took a miraculous finish by Phelps, who imperceptibly touched out silver medalist Milorad Cavic of Serbia for a winning margin of one one-hundredth of a second.

"The term 'Spitzean feat' might be kind of outdated now. It might be a 'Phelpsean feat,'" U.S. teammate Aaron Peirsol says..

The 100 fly was the only event in which Phelps did not set a world record. He was more disappointed, though, in his finishing time in the 200-meter butterfly. In that race, his goggles started filling with water as he dove in off the starting blocks. By the time he headed for his last turn, he couldn't see at all. He had to count strokes to know when to turn.

He ripped off his goggles in frustration when it was over. He had won and set a world record, but his time wasn't as fast as he set out to do.

No one watching was disappointed.

"Our whole country can be proud of him," says Peter Ueberroth, U.S. Olympic committee chairman. "Maybe in this era, nobody makes us prouder."

Bush told Phelps in a congratulatory call Sunday from his Texas ranch that "if you can handle eight gold medals, you can handle anything."

Through it all, even as Bush came to watch his first race and the NBA stars playing on the U.S. Olympic basketball team came to others, Phelps stayed even keel. While they were eating at the athletes' village, his U.S. swimming teammates would ask him if he realized what he was doing.

"He was like, 'Man, pizza's good today,'" Brendan Hansen says.

They could see what he was doing, and as the meet wore on, his teammates were asked many questions about it.

"I think years and years down the road we'll realize more and more how amazing he is and how special he really is," says Natalie Coughlin, who won six medals in Beijing.

Hansen tried to put it in context for non-swimming fans.

"He just made the pressure putt in the U.S. Open to win it, just won the Tour de France and he just knocked out Muhammad Ali in the last round. He just did all three of those things in a week," Hansen says.

The record-breaker came Sunday in the 4x100-meter medley relay, in which Peirsol swam the opening backstroke leg, Hansen the breaststroke leg, Phelps the butterfly leg and Lezak the anchor freestyle leg.

After Lezak climbed out of the water, the four U.S. swimmers huddled like a football team on the pool deck. In the huddle, Phelps' teammates congratulated him.

"We're all very proud — and I'll speak for myself especially — to be part of something as special as this and to end this wonderful meet on such a high note," Peirsol says.

When the huddle broke, Phelps acknowledged the crowd's cheers by raising both arms and pumping his fists in the air. Moments later, he stepped on the medal podium for an eighth and final time, his eyes welling up as they had been all week as he watched the U.S. flag raised and listened to the national anthem.

"I don't want to forget anything that happened," Phelps says. "With getting emotional like I was on the awards stands, those are moments and experiences that will live with me forever."

They'll live with his mom as well, who let the tears flow every time she saw her son on the podium.

"There's not one single word that can express how I feel," she says. "I can say proud, I can say honored, I can say it's a performance you want to see your child achieve."

Source: http://www.usatoday.com