Unbelieveable excitement. This is what the Olympics are all about.
The U.S. men’s 4×100m free relay team won gold Monday in the most exciting, most record-breaking, most amazing, thrilling, unbelievable relay anyone could ever imagine, evidence of exactly what Jason Lezak, who swam the greatest anchor leg in relay history, had to say when it was all over:
“People always step up and do things out of the ordinary at the Olympics.”
This was even so much more. Extraordinary in every regard.
The U.S. men — Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones and Jason Lezak — set a world record, finishing in 3:08.24. France took second, Australia third.
The victory gave Michael Phelps his second gold medal here in Beijing — in a race that had shaped up to be one of the most difficult on his quest for eight. The French and even the Australians had widely been considered prerace favorites.
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Before the preliminaries at these Games, the world record in the 4×100 relay stood at 3:12.46. That mark was set by an American team swimming in 2006.
One day ago, during the prelims, a U.S. team broke that record, swimming 3:12.23. (Under Olympic rules, the swimmers in the prelims get gold medals, too. Nathan Adrian, Matt Grevers and Ben Wildman-Tobriner swam with Jones.)
One day later, in the Olympic final, to go and then chop 4 seconds off that mark is — well, it’s not done. It took 20 years for the record to drop 4 seconds to the 3:12 range. In 1988, at the Seoul Olympics, an American team lowered the record to 3:16.53.
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At the wall, Lezak got his hand out in front. He touched a mere .08 of a second in front of Bernard.
Before Sunday, the closest finish in the event in the Olympics had been in Sydney, when the Australians beat the Americans by .19 of a second.
With the pressure of all of it on him, Lezak threw down the fastest split of all time, 46.06.
At the Olympics, people step up and do extraordinary things.
Made even sweeter since the French team couldn’t back this up:
“The Americans? We’re going to smash them. That’s what we came here for.”
The we in that statement is the French men’s 4×100 freestyle relay team. And the who making the proclamation was Frenchman Alain Bernard, who holds the current world record in the 100-meter freestyle.
As for Phelps it’s two down and six more to go.
