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Beyond all borders

Joe Posnanski
I keep staring at this photograph Above me, the crowd is still cheering, still standing, still trying to find the words that match the emotions of watching Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal of these Olympics. Impossible? Incredible? Unthinkable? It's like Phelps has forced the thesaurus into early retirement.
I keep staring at this photograph because it’s the closest I can get to the heart of all this. Sure, I can tell you the facts of the day. On Sunday morning in Beijing, Michael Phelps swam the butter fly leg of the United States 400-medley relay. In the medley relay, each country has four swimmers, and each swims 100 meters of a different stroke - backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle. It is a race that really tests a nation's depth of swimming talent. The United States had never lost Olympic gold.
When Phelps dived into the pool, the United States was in third place, a half second behind the leader. When he finished his 100-meters, the United States was in first place. That's Michael Phelps. His teammate Jason Lezak took the lead and swam the last 100-meters, brought home the gold, finished off another world record. And that gave Phelps eight gold medals for these Games, one more gold than American swimmer Mark Spitz won in 1972, more gold than anyone thought possible.
"Some many people thought it couldn't be done," Phelps would say moments after the race. "All it takes is some imagination."
Well, it may take a bit more than that. Winning eight gold medals in a single Olympics also takes a single mom in Baltimore, Debbie, who is a principal of a middle school and has dedicated her life to her son's athletic genius. It takes a driven coach. Bob Bowman, who can see what's
possible and wants to push those limits. It takes a 6-foot-4 young man with a 79-inch wingspan and the unimaginable drive to swim countless hours and eat 12,000 calories every day and handle the most intense pressure an athlete can feel.
And it also takes being part of the world's best swimming team -three of Phelps' eight medals came in relays. Individually, sure, he won the 200- and 400-meter individual medleys, the 100- and 200-meter butterflies and the 200 meter freestyle. That's remarkable enough, but that would not have stopped the world
No, it was being part of those three winning relays - all three in world record time - that pushed Phelps' achievement from sublime to historic.
And still, I keep staring at this photograph. True, you could try to explain Phelps' triumph by using pure numbers. He's only 23, but he has now won 14 gold medals in his career, which is four more than any Olympian ever, which is more than 181 different countries that have competed at the Olympics, including Mexico (pop. About 108 million), India (about 11 billion) and Nigeria (about 120 million).
He has now won 16 medals overall, which is also the most for any Olympian. After the race on Sunday, FINA - the governing body for swimming - gave Phelps a special medal for his extraordinary achievements. That is just what he needed. He is also now either the sole owner or a part of seven world records and eight Olympic records.
True, you could try to explain Phelps achievement by pointing out that in Olympic competition alone he swam more than two miles in the four disciplines. The sheer endurance it takes to win eight swimming gold medals at an Olympics is overwhelming; Melvin Stewart, a former Olympic champion in the 200-meter butterfly, compared it to someone trying to win gold medal in the
mile, the 100-meter dash and the marathon at the same Games.
"The more you know about swimming," Stewart said, "the more you realize that what he’s done here is not even possible. ’
Still, for me, it comes down to die photograph. It was taken by a Sports Illustrated photographer It shows thefinish of Saturday's 100-meter butterfly as seen from the bottom of the pool . The 100-meter butterfly, you might remember, was Phelps' toughest race; he won gold by one one-hundredth of a second, or roughly thirty-times faster than an eye-blink.
Well the photo is from an instant before the finish. On the right, Serbian swimmer Milorad Cavic is reaching for the wall. His arms are stretched out in front of him, like Superman, and his fingertips are just two or three inches from the wall.
On the left, Michael Phelps is finishing his final butterfly stroke, and his arms are off the side, like he's pretending to be an airplane, like he's a bird getting ready to take off. He appears to be about 2 or 3 feet from the wall.
There's an optical illusion to the photo because Cavic is, in fact, under the water while Phelps is above. Even so I have stared at that picture and stared at it, because there's no possible way that Phelps won that race. It's simply impossible. There is no conceivable way that he could he brought his arms forward and touched the wall before Cavic glided the final inches.
And yet he did. Phelps somehow did. That’s what I think when trying to sum up a man winning eight gold medals at the Olympics. It seems beyond human capacity. But, isn't that the point of the Olympics, to show that nothing is beyond human capacity. He somehow did.
(Joe Posnanski writes for the Kansas City Star and has been voted best sports columnist in America)