How Michael Phelps won Eight Gold Medals
Posted by: chris in Law of Attraction, tags: Michael Phelps
The world witnessed Michael Phelps winning 8 gold medals at the Summer Olympics 2008; beating Mark Spitz’s gold medal count and establishing a new world’s record. Most people consider winning an Olympic event to be the ultimate achievement of athletic ability. While it can’t be denied that natural ability as well as dedication and hard work were involved here, I believe that what happened was much more than that. I believe that we just saw the universe smiling on Michael Phelps to grant him his dream. To me, there is no other explanation.
His dream was to win eight gold medals. And this he did, though not entirely due to the uniqueness of his own athletic abilities. This was an example of how it takes more than our own efforts to accomplish anything.
Examining the races
There’s no denying that Michael Phelps is a world-class athlete, as demonstrated by his setting world records in four events:
- 400 meter individual medley
- 200 meter freestyle
- 200 meter butterfly
- 200 meter individual medley
Given his performance in these events, it’s no surprise that he won gold medals in each of them. But in three other events the correlation between performance and result is not so clear-cut. In fact, the results were due, in a large part, to circumstances beyond his control. This is because they were team events which would not have been won if not for the effort and abilities of his team members.
But didn’t Michael Phelps demonstrate his prowess by outperforming his team members during his leg of the races? Well, maybe in only one of the races - the 4 x 200 meter freestyle relay. This was the only relay event where he had the best time of any of his team members. Even so, he still depended on their performance to win a gold medal.
In the other two relays - the 4 x 100 meter freestyle relay and the 4 x 100 meter medley relay - he did not have the best time, so his dependency on his team members was even more evident. Especially when we consider the 4 x 100 meter freestyle relay.
In the freestyle relay the US was behind for most of the race! It was the last swimmer in the relay, teammate Jason Lezak who came from behind to take the lead. Lezak’s performance was incredible - he started out a full body length behind and ended up with the fastest 100 meter freestyle split (46.06 sec.) in history to pull ahead and win the race for his team.
Until Lezak finished his leg, Phelps’ dream of winning eight gold medals was in question.
Winning by a fingernail
This brings us to the 100 meter butterfly. This was the race that made me realize there must be some arrangement with the universe whereby Michael Phelps was meant to win no matter what.
In this individual race, he did not set a world record. In fact, he came in 0.18 seconds behind the current record held by Ian Crocker. But he must have beat everyone else hands down - everyone else just couldn’t keep up with him, right? Well, not really. He got off to a slow start, and spent most of the race behind. At one point he was in seventh place and a full 0.5 seconds behind the leader Milorad Cavic It wasn’t until the last one-hundredth of a second that he pulled ahead - just in time to win!
And even then it was not evident that he had won. Everyone watching the race thought that he came in second for the bronze. It sure looked like there was no way he could have beat Cavic after being behind for what looked like the entire race. But that was not in the cards. According to the electronic touch pad, Phelps hit it first. It really seems as if he was destined to win eight gold medals no matter what.
Lessons to be learned
We can see the ingredients for applying the law of attraction at work here.
Michael Phelps made clear his intent when he wrote on a piece of paper (which he kept to himself) a list of his goals for the Olympics - his dream. He also had a strong belief in the power of intention. In fact, throughout the Olympics I heard athletes say, after winning this or that event, “you can do anything you put your mind to!” Phelps himself is quoted as saying, upon setting one of his Olympic records, “Dream as big as you can dream, and anything is possible …”. And then later ” … Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to.” Finally, he was able to let go and do his best. After the 100 meter butterfly I saw an interview where he commented something to the effect that his strategy was just to go out there, give it his all, and then let the chips fall where they may.
Well now he is a celebrity, but from what I’ve seen he continues to maintain a sense of humility. Perhaps he recognizes that while you can believe in your own abilities all you want, there is a whole world of circumstances out there over which we have no control. Achieving anything depends on the cooperation of those circumstances to support our goals. Knowing this helps to keep us humble.
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