So when Phelps says, "I want to set in motion the close up in the exhibit of swimming," I assume he is serious. Phelps answered questions at two crowded release conferences Sunday -- one at the Water Cube, the other down the boulevard at the Main Press Center. Most of the questions, of course, were about his record-breaking performance. But Phelps also talked, briefly, about swimming being an "every four years sport" in the eyes of Americans. He wants to metamorphose that.
But how? Match races? Television specials? A subject swimming league? Let's be unblocked about one thing: Phelps already has raised the sandbar for the sport. There is more charge in swimming now than at any mo in American history. But Phelps wants his peers to swim in the mainstream, and that is a greater call into doubt than anything he faced here.
Phelps is the Michael Jordan of his sport. The Tiger Woods. Pele in half a bodysuit, Wayne Gretzky in unfrozen water, the Carl Lewis of swimming.
Those men all ennobled their sport. But Jordan's fun already was duty of the American construction -- the most-watched NCAA event trick ever occurred in 1979, the year Jordan was conclude from his costly adherents team. When Gretzky was traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles, he raised American awareness of hockey immeasurably.
When Pele came out of retirement to conduct for the New York Cosmos in the 1970s, he was intended to ignite a soccer blast in the United States. Whether he succeeded depends on your delineation of "boom." Soccer has never contravened into the mainstream as a U.S. viewer sport, but millions of American kids play, and the recreation is a lot more predominating in the States than it was in 1975.
The most engaging comparisons, though, are Woods and Lewis. Fewer Americans occupy oneself in golf now than were playing in 1997, when Tiger won his outset Masters -- Tiger was hypothetical to engender prevail upon in golf, but he has mostly created absorb in Tiger (which is not his fault). And Lewis never made Americans mind about footmark in non-Olympic years. As Phelps tries to drum up fascinate in his sport, he must effigy out what to do next. And there are risks involved.
Theoretically, if swimming becomes more popular, that is allowable for the bottom wrinkle of the world's most renowned swimmer. But it is not that simple. Phelps' pure allurement now, from a marketing perspective, is his dominance. Americans don't girlfriend swimmers as much as they be wild about winners.
Phelps just won eight gold medals in eight tries and set seven period records in the process. Right now, there is improbable attract in Phelps, but circumscribed fee in swimming. Phelps can compel millions in endorsements without diving into another pool. But if he wants to get individuals to watchman swimming between now and 2012, he has to give them a reason. That means swimming.
And that means the jeopardy of losing. A 100-meter butterfly rematch against Milo Cavic, for example, might change for compelling TV. But what if Phelps loses? There is a knowledge that Phelps is chairlady and impossibly goodly torso above the idleness of the world. If he wants, he can nag that notion for as extensive as he lives.
But Phelps is the to begin to declare that's not actually the case. "For this to happen, the whole shebang had to eclipse into right place," Phelps said Sunday. Phelps hates losing, but he is not apprehensive of it. In 2004 in Athens, he entered the 200-meter freestyle even though the unimpaired swimming crowd knew he would indubitably mislay to Australian Ian Thorpe.
You can be unshakable that his agents and handlers are less perturbed about swimming's tomorrow than about Phelps' income. It will be up to him to assemble his own way and dwell to it. How height can he to go his sport? Well, this week he talked excitedly of the intact mass at a Baltimore Ravens exhibit devil-may-care watching one of his races. Media reports, however, suggest that clumsily 10,000 kinfolk stuck around. Phelps is the greatest swimmer ever, but can he swim uphill?
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