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Michael Phelps has now won his eighth gold medal. But where does his 2008 Olympic performance rank as the greatest of all time? Better than Jesse Owens in 1936, or Carl Lewis in 1984, or Nadia Comaneci in 1976? Take a look with me through Olympic history, as I rank the 25 greatest performances ever, and see where Phelps comes up.
25. Halil Mutlu, weightlifting, Turkey, 2000: The 4-foot-11 Mutlu won gold in three different Olympics, but it was the 2000 Games when he accomplished his greatest achievement, setting world records with a 305-kilogram total and a 167.5-kilogram clean and jerk. With a body weight of just under 56 kilograms, he was lifting three times his weight over his head.
24. Ingemar Stenmark, skiing, Sweden, 1980: Stenmark won golds in the slalom and giant slalom with showings that contributed to his reputation as the greatest slalom specialist in history.
23. Bonnie Blair, speed skating, United States, 1994: Blair, who was Sports Illustrated’s Sportswoman of the Year, won gold in the 500 and 1,000 meters and came in fourth in the 1,500.
22. Greg Louganis, diving, United States, 1988: The greatest diver ever, Louganis won a silver in 1976, two golds in 1984 and two golds in 1988; he probably would have brought a couple of medals home from Moscow in 1980 if the U.S. hadn’t boycotted. His 1988 performance was especially memorable because of how quickly he recovered from hitting his head on the springboard.
21. Aleksandr Dityatin, gymnastics, USSR, 1980: Like Phelps, Dityatin won eight medals in eight events in 1980, although four of Dityatin’s medals were silver and one was bronze. Dityatin’s achievement is somewhat marred — and largely forgotten in the West — because of the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, but even if Americans have never heard of him, he won gold in the individual all-around, the rings and the team competition and had one of the great Olympic gymnastics achievements.
20. Alvin Kraenzlein, track and field, United States, 1900: By winning the 60 meters, 200-meter hurdles, 110-meter hurdles and long jump, Kraenzlein became the first – and still, more than 100 years later, only – athlete to win four individual track and field gold medals in one Olympics.
19. Jean-Claude Killy, skiing, France, 1968: Perhaps the greatest athlete in French history, Killy won the gold in the giant slalom, slalom and downhill, sweeping the alpine skiing events in his home country.
18. Wilma Rudolph, track and field, United States, 1960:
Rudolph won the 100, 200 and 4×100 golds despite having suffered from polio as a child, and despite being just two years removed from giving birth to her first child at a time when it was almost unheard of for mothers to compete. (There are 20 mothers in this year’s U.S. Olympic contingent.) More than any single athlete, Rudolph put women’s track and field on the map.
17. Anton Heida, gymnastics, United States, 1904: Heida was the first athlete ever to win five golds in one Olympics, taking the combined, the pommel horse, the vault, the horizontal bar and contributing to the American victory in the team competition. He also won the silver in the parallel bars.
16. Hubert Van Innis, archery, Belgium, 1920: No, archery isn’t the type of sport we usually associate with athletic greatness, but there was a time when it was. So let’s give some credit to a guy who took four golds and two silvers in 1920.
15. Nedo Nadi, fencing, Italy, 1920: Nadi won gold in all five of the fencing events he entered in 1920, and he’s the only fencer to win gold with the foil, the epee and the sabre.
14. Bob Mathias, decathlon, United States, 1952: After winning the decathlon gold in 1948 at just 19 years of age, Mathias came back stronger and faster four years later. He won the javelin, shot put, discus and 400 meters and finished with a stunning 7,887 points, beating the silver medalist by more than 900 points.
13. Babe Didrickson, track and field, United States, 1932: At a time when women’s track and field consisted of just four individual events, Didrickson won two golds and a silver. She set a world record in winning the 80-meter hurdles and an Olympic record in winning the javelin, and she came in second by just two centimeters in the high jump.
12. Larissa Latynina, gymnastics, USSR, 1956: Latynina won golds in the individual all-around, the floor exercise, the vault and the team competition. She also won a silver in the uneven bars, and she was part of the bronze-winning Soviet team in the portable apparatus. With 18 medals over three Olympic Games, she has the most medals of any athlete; Phelps will have a chance to surpass her in 2012.
11. Paavo Nurmi, track and field, Finland, 1924: Nurmi entered five events and won gold in them all: The 1,500, the 5,000, the cross country, and the 3,000-meter and cross country team competitions.
10. Bjørn Dæhlie, cross country skiing, Norway, 1992: Dæhlie won gold in the 15-kilometer pursuit, the 50-kilometer freestyle and the 4×10-kilometer relay, plus a silver in the 30-kilometer classical. He also competed in 1994 and 1998 before retiring with eight gold medals, four silver medals, and recognition as the greatest cross-country skier ever.
9. Carl Lewis, track and field, United States, 1984: Lewis won gold in the 100 meters, 200 meters, 4×100-meter relay and the long jump. You can make a good case that because of his longevity — he won golds in four different Games — Lewis is the greatest Olympian ever. But while his greatest year, 1984, was a spectacular achievement, it doesn’t rival what Phelps did — and it was made easier by the Soviet-led boycott.
8. Jackie Joyner-Kersee, track and field, United States, 1988: Joyner-Kersee blew away the field in the heptathlon, setting a world record that still stands and winning four of the seven events. She also won the gold medal with an Olympic record long jump.
7. Jesse Owens, track and field, United States, 1936:
For his historical impact, winning in Hitler’s Germany, Owens was the most significant Olympian ever. But the pure athletic accomplishment is what we’re concerned about here, and Owens left Berlin as unquestionably the greatest athlete of his time.
6. Johnny Weissmuller, swimming, United States, 1924: There were only six men’s swimming events at the 1924 Olympics, and the 19-year-old Weissmuller entered three and won them all, taking golds in the 100- and 400-meter freestyle and the 4×200-meter relay. He was also a part of the American bronze medal-winning water polo team. He later became better known around the world for playing Tarzan in 12 movies.
5. Carl Schuhmann, gymnastics and wrestling, Germany, 1896: You’ve probably never heard of Schuhmann, but he did something extraordinary at the first modern Olympics, taking three gold medals in gymnastics (team parallel bars, team horizontal bar and vault) and one in Greco-Roman wrestling. He even finished fourth in weightlifting. The world of sports was very different in the 19th Century, but that kind of versatility is worthy of praise in any era.
4. Eric Heiden, speed skating, United States, 1980: Heiden became the first person to win five gold medals in the Winter Olympics by winning all five events he entered: The 500 meters, 1,000 meters, 1,500 meters, 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters. Speed skating in five events over the course of less than two weeks takes an incredible toll on the body, and although Americans mostly remember the 1980 Games for the Miracle on Ice, it was Heiden who was 1980’s greatest Olympian.
3. Mark Spitz, swimming, United States, 1972: Spitz’s record seven gold medals stood for 36 years, and he may have won eight golds if the 50-meter freestyle had been an event in 1972, as it is now. But even if Spitz had won eight golds in 1972, what Phelps has done this week would still be more impressive because worldwide swimming was weaker then than it is now. In 1972, the United States won nearly half of the Olympic swimming medals, but now countries like Serbia, Brazil, Hungary and France have stronger swimming programs, meaning Phelps has more global competition than Spitz had.
2. Nadia Comaneci, gymnastics, Romania, 1976:
At age 14 — too young to compete under today’s rules — Comaneci won three golds, a silver and a bronze, and gave the world the most memorable performance in gymnastics history with the first perfect 10 ever. That performance — the embodiment of perfection — was the greatest in Olympic history until …
1. Michael Phelps, swimming, United States, 2008: Phelps won one more event than Spitz, achieved a different kind of perfection than Comaneci, and accomplished the greatest feat in the history of the Olympic Games.
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If you’re Michael Phelps, there’s not really a whole lot of reasons to keep doing what he’s doing.
As you probably heard last week, the number eight is considered the luckiest number in China. People pay thousands of RMB to get cell phone numbers or license plates with eights in them. It’s why the games began at 8:08 p.m. on 8/8/08. It’s even part of the reason that Beijing made such a push to land the ‘08 games.
For most of this year’s Olympics, 
Michael Phelps