BEIJING – Four years ago in Athens, when Michael Phelps had completed the lifelong dream and was clutching his first gold medal, his mother and two sisters scoured a fence line dividing swimmers from spectators.
In the middle of hundreds of prying eyes, a hand reached through the fence during an intimate moment. Huddling close, Phelps’ mother Debbie and his sisters Hillary and Whitney locked their eyes on the glimmering medal hanging from a ribbon. They all cried. Even now, when one of them tells the story, they struggle to keep the tears back.
“Michael stuck his medal through the fence and we were all there. It was so special,” Hillary said. “He stuck the medal through and was like ‘Look what I did! I did it. I did it.’ ”
On Wednesday in Beijing, Phelps repeated the feat for the 10th and 11th times, winning the 200-meter butterfly and swimming the opening leg of the 4x200 freestyle relay, giving him more gold medals than any Olympian in the history of the games. The former mark of nine golds was held by American icons Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz and Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi and Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina.
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