Beijing: Michael Phelps swam to a record-breaking eighth gold in a single Games on Sunday to end a stunning week of achievement in the Olympic pool.
The Baltimore Bullet won the 4x100 meter medley relay with Team USA to become the first athlete in Olympic history to win eight gold medals in one edition of the Games.
Phelps has overtaken the previous record of seven Gold medals set by Mark Spitz at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
His 14 golds, which include six in Athens, make him the most successful Olympian of the modern era by a big margin of five.
Blessed with an arm span bigger than his height, Phelps has pumped himself up with hip-hop before races and always looks for his mother in the stands at moments of triumph.
He is guaranteed a lifetime of multi-million corporate deals. But Phelps has failed to match Spitz in one aspect. His 100m butterfly gold on Saturday was not in a world record time, unlike his other seven wins in Beijing. All seven of Spitz's medals came in world record times.
Team USA comprising Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen, Michael Phelps and Jason Lezak won the race in World record breaking time of three minutes 29.34 seconds.
Team Australia finished second and Japan third.
Here’s the list of the eight golds that Phelps has claimed in Beijing:
The first Gold came on August 10 in the 400m individual medley, the second was on August 11 when Phelps won the 4X100 m freestyle, 200-m freestyle on August 12 won him the third Gold.
The 200-m Butterfly and the 4X200 m freestyle golds were won on August 13. He claimed his sixth in the 200-m individual medley on August 15 and added the seventh gold on August 16 in the 100-m butterfly event. Finally the record 8th Gold was won just minutes before in the 4X100 metre relay.(Inputs from Digvijay Singh Deo)
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