by MIKE VACCARO, New York PostBEIJING - In the moments after the fifth world record fell, with the National Aquatics Center still shaking with the after-spasms of kinetic passion, one of the vanquished masses was looking for a way to put Michael Phelps and what he's done here into some kind of perspective.
"He is just another person," said Alexander Sukhorukov, a member of the silver-medal-winning Russian 4x200 freestyle team that had finished about a week and a half behind the Phelps-fueled Americans. "But maybe he is from a different planet."
British freestyler Simon Burnett already had pondered that possibility. A few days earlier, he bumped into U.S. coach Eddie Reese in the cafeteria line of the Olympic Village.
"I figured out Michael Phelps," Burnett told Reese. "He's not from another planet. He's from the future. His father made him and then made a time machine. Sixty years from now he is an average swimmer, but he has come back here to mop up."
See? And you thought it was just the deadline-deadened sportswriters who were having a hard time containing their imaginations whenever we see Phelps do what he's done thus far at the Water Cube - where he is 5-for-5 in gold medal attempts and 5-for-5 in toppling world records; where he has already pushed his individual gold medal total to 11, two more than any man or woman who ever stepped into the Olympic Games, which only goes back to 1896. Read more >>
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