Michael Phelps, Who Is Clearly A Fish, Now Has 22 Olympic Gold Medals

If you’ve got even a mild passing interest in sport and the Olympic Games and you haven’t been putting everything else on hold to watch Michael Phelps swim each time he appears on screen, you’re absolutely mugging yourself.

Watching Phelps at the Olympics is like watching Michael Jordan in his prime. It’s the absolute, indisputable, no one’s-even-close GOAT plying his trade.
After Phelps hauled in his mind-boggling twentieth Olympic gold medal (and followed it up with number 21 a mere 70 minutes later) on Wednesday, he completed would could well be his final Olympics campaign today by securing gold medal number 22 in the men’s 200m individual medley.
Phelps never looked in danger of finishing anywhere but first in the race, with a strong breaststroke leg setting him well and truly up to blitz the field in the final freestyle lap. The world record still belongs to American rival Ryan Lochte (who faded late to finish the race in 5th), but the Olympic crown once again rests on the head of Phelps.
In taking out this race, Phelps’ pet event, he becomes the first swimmer ever to win gold in the same event at four consecutive Olympic Games. The last time someone other than Phelps won the men’s 200m IM at an Olympics, he was 15 years old.
With 22 gold medals, he now has 13 more than the next most decorated Olympian.
If you think we’re gonna see something like this repeated in our lifetimes, you’re clearly having a laugh.
Phelps has one more event, the 100m butterfly to go. Not that you’d need to guess this or anything, but he won that event at the 2012 London Olympics. And the 2008 Beijing Games. And the 2004 Athens Games too.
Michael Jordan wore number 23. Wouldn’t it be bloody fitting if swimming’s GOAT finished up on 23 gold medals.

Photo: Al Bello/Getty.

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