REMEMBERING 8-8-08

      

8/8/2013

BY MIKE GUSTAFSON//CORRESPONDENT

Five years ago today, on 8-8-08, the greatest 8 days in Olympic sports history began. Michael Phelps’ legendary 8-for-8 commenced halfway around the world. 8 golds, 8 events, a few miracles, a race decided by .01, and a few billion eyes and ears forever captivated by one man’s mission. 

Today is the 5-year anniversary of that legendary run, as noted by Swimvortex.com. Today is also an appropriate day to reflect and look back at those 8 days at the Beijing Olympics, and how those 8 days altered our sport’s trajectory. As we begin to collect our post-Worlds breath and contemplate meets further down the horizon, like Rio, we remember Beijing.

In August of 2008, I lived in Los Angeles, media Mecca of all things pop-culture and digitally influential. That week, I also visited my small hometown in Michigan that has 3 traffic lights (up from 1 in the mid-90s). While it’s impossible to accurately state the exact, concrete ramifications that “The Phelps Effect” had nation-wide that week, I can reflect on my own different, yet similar, Beijing Olympic viewing experiences in two completely different cultural areas of America. 

At the commencement of Phelps’ Beijing gold medal run, I was in Michigan. I watched along with a billion other people the opening ceremonies on TV, which themselves were instantly legendary and a spectacle in their own right. Those who also watched knew the following days of competition would be different, somehow, than previous Olympics. It just seemed more… magical. One day later, Phelps won the 400 IM, in my eyes still the greatest singular performance I’ve ever seen. (As well as turning in a time that may indeed be unbeatable.) Those two moments—the most spectacular opening ceremonies followed by the most spectacular swim performance—would have been enough. 

But it continued. 

As the days went on, and as we held our breaths and watched, choosing the viewing venue became almost as important as watching the swimming events themselves. One night, I gathered in the basement of an old club swim team friend. It was an Olympics viewing party, complete with snacks, refreshments, and homemade ice cream. “You think he’s gonna do it?” was the debate. We thought we had the answer to that question as Lezak hit the water way-too-far-behind the French in the 400 freestyle relay. Then, as Lezak charged home with a superhero amount of fortitude, as we leapt and hollered and high-fived, that was the moment I knew this streak was as much about bonding moments as sports moments. 

Another night I watched swimming in a bar. Yep. A local bar had swimming on TV. And it wasn’t just one TV, but every single TV was tuned into swimming. This football-crazed patronage was all suddenly swimming fans, shouting splits and singing swimming’s praises. 

As the week continued, as golds kept coming, excitement built like an avalanche. I walked into a tiny coffee shop wearing my Trials t-shirt that read, “Phelps Phan.” Literally one week before, no one would have noticed. That morning in my small, rural town, an elderly woman approached me and asked, “Can I buy that?” I said that I didn’t know if she could get that shirt anywhere. She shook her head. “I want to buy that one,” she said, pointing at my chest. 

Later, I flew back to LA. I expected a more detached buzz in a notoriously fair-weathered media metropolis. But the buzz was as palpable as in my small Midwestern hometown. It wasn’t just the newspaper headlines. People who I could bet my savings had never talked, seen, or were even interested in swimming before were not only fascinated by the sport—they were experts. Phelps (and swimming) was talked and discussed at the bank, the grocery store, the burrito stand, the sushi counter, and the park basketball court. In a city notorious for its own naval-gazing, Los Angelites were as infected with Phelpsmania as anyone else. Former TV co-workers called me up, “So, will you just explain to me what’s everyone talking about?” 

The 7th was the best. He was beat. I knew it. My non-swimming friends knew it. “Oh man,” my friend said at the halfway mark of the 100m fly. “That sucks.” It felt like watching a friend die. A dream burst. A balloon popping. 

Then he won, somehow. The slow-motion cameras played and re-played the final meter, verifying that now famous imagery of the finger-tip at the finish—The Phelps Phinnish—but there was still disbelief. “No way!” everyone shouted, watching, re-playing, mouths aghast. It was as though Phelps himself was pulling a magic trick on the rest of us while NBC tried to convince us of its validity with slow-motion video evidence. Later, the 400 medley relay won, and the most magical week in Olympics history wrapped. 

Five years later, I ponder those 8 days—the .01, the Lezak anchor, the water-filled goggles, the 400 IM—but I also remember the various places I watched those moments happen. My parent’s house. A friend’s party. A bar filled with strangers. When a small, blinky-light town and a media metropolis both buzz about the same thing, it’s not just news. It’s transcendent. 

The Phelps Effect may, in time, fizzle and fade. But five years later, it’s still being felt within the swimming community. Just look up recent lightning-fast times at the Speedo Junior National Championships. Or just watch NBC swim meet coverage. They replay those magic moments from 2008 probably as much as we swim fans think about them. 

To make a lasting impact, you don’t need lights, cameras, or smoke and mirror productions. Any sports fan knows the difference between a heavily choreographed magic trick, and real, actual magic. That’s why artificial leagues like the XFL burn out, and the Olympic flame burns on. 

Phelps’ 8 golds were magical. We probably won’t see anything like it again. And that’s OK. 

Because we saw it. 

Mike Gustafson is a freelance writer for USASwimming.org and Splash Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ MikeLGustafson