Michael Phelps grew up face down in a swimming pool.

　　For day after day, year after year he practised in his club pool, building his strength, perfecting his technique and feeding his ambition to redefine the boundaries of his sport.

　　On Saturday all the hard work paid off when he won his seventh gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, equalling Mark Spitz’s record for a single Games and earning himself a place in the pantheon of all-time sporting greats.

　　“He may be human, but he’s from a different planet,” Russian swimmer Alexander Sukhorukov said earlier this week after the 23-year-old Phelps had moved one step closer to the landmark.

　　“A different galaxy,” he added.

　　Phelps’s coach Bob Bowman spotted his potential when he was an 11-year-old, telling his parents he had a golden future so long as he dedicated himself utterly to swimming.

　　Phelps bought into the dream and sacrificed any pretence of a normal life in his pursuit of glory.

　　Tobogganing or going bowling with friends was ruled out in case he injured himself, late night partying was a no-no and girlfriends were pushed to one side to make room for practice.

　　But Phelps has no regrets and instead revels in his exploits that have not only turned him into a millionaire but have also raised the profile of a sport that trails badly in the popularity stakes back home behind the likes of baseball and basketball.

　　“I want to change the sport of swimming. I want people to talk about it, think about it, and look forward to seeing it,” he once told his agent.

　　OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

　　Famed for his fierce focus and ferocious competitive spirit, Phelps is an obsessive who sets himself near impossible targets and then seems to exceed them.

　　Anyone who knew Phelps when he was a child in his hometown of Baltimore, must be shaking their heads in disbelief.

　　At his first swimming lesson he had a screaming fit, terrified of putting his face in the water, at school he had to take medicine to overcome an attention deficit disorder and at home he struggled to come to terms with his parent’s divorce.

　　Swimming came to the rescue, giving a structure to his day and allowing him to thrive in at least one area of his life.

　　Bowman became his coach when he was 11 and has charted the swimmer’s rise to the top, assuming the role of father figure along the way, teaching him how to drive and showing him how to knot his tie for his first school dance.

　　“I’ve been able to accomplish my lifetime dreams and goals. I always wanted to be an Olympic gold medallist, a professional athlete, a world-record holder and Bob has taken me to all of those,” a grateful Phelps said.

　　The achievements soon stacked up.

　　At 15 he became the youngest person to hold a world record and also the youngest male in 68 years to be selected for the U.S. Olympic swimming team―coming fifth in a race in Sydney.

　　He has now chalked up 25 individual world records against 26 for Spitz and has 13 career Olympic golds, four more than anyone else.

　　ROMANCE

　　Extraordinary in the water, Phelps has an ordinary, boy-next-door persona outside the pool.

　　He does nothing to hide his affection for his mother, Debbie, who follows him to all his meets. He loves hip-hop music, video games and watches DVDs endlessly while relaxing between races.

　　He has a gigantic appetite, eating industrial quantities of food to fuel his exertions, and relishes the company of friends, seeking camaraderie after the loneliness of the lanes.

　　He has been romantically attached to a few women but has never had a succession of glamorous girlfriends, like many sporting figures, and if he is seeing someone now he is keeping very quiet about it.

　　He takes his position as a role model extremely seriously and has slipped up only once, getting arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol a few months after the Athens Games for which he apologised profusely.

　　At 23 he is probably near the peak of is physical powers and is certainly a much more muscular, imposing figure than back in 2004. Nobody has suggested he is considering retiring after Beijing and it would be hard to imagine him leaving the pool.

　　Perhaps his biggest problem will be finding a serious rival to stir his competitive drive and push him to new heights.

　　8.

　　Spitz hails Phelps’ ‘epic’ 7 gold medals

　　BEIJING (AP)―Mark Spitz had one word for the performance that gave Michael Phelps his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Games and equaled his own Olympic record that had stood for 36 years.

　　“Epic,” Spitz said Saturday morning when reached by The Associated Press in Detroit, where his youngest son was playing in a basketball tournament.

　　Moments earlier, Phelps came from behind to win the 100-meter butterfly, edging Croatia’s Milorad Cavic by a hundredth of a second.

　　“It goes to show you that not only is this guy the greatest swimmer of all time and the greatest Olympian of all time, he’s maybe the greatest athlete of all time,” Spitz said. “He’s the greatest racer who ever walked the planet.”

　　With the victory, the 23-year-old from Baltimore pulled even with Spitz’s seven-gold haul at the 1972 Munich Games. Phelps can break the record in his final race on Sunday, the 400 medley relay.

　　Spitz sounded almost giddy on the other end of the phone line.

　　“I’m ecstatic,” he said. “I always wondered what my feelings would be. I feel a tremendous load off my back. Somebody told me years ago you judge one’s character by the company you keep, and I’m just happy to be in the company of Michael Phelps. That’s the bottom line.”

　　“I’m so proud of what he’s been able to do,” Spitz added. “I did what I did and it was in my day in those set of circumstances. For 36 years it stood as a benchmark. I’m just pleased that somebody was inspired by what I had done. He’s entitled to every second of what’s occurring to him now.”

　　Spitz said he had considered it a “foregone conclusion” that Phelps would equal his record, especially since he won six golds at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

　　And now he fully expects Phelps to make it 8-for-8 on Sunday with a win in the relay.

　　“The Americans have never lost that race since it’s been an event in the Olympic Games,” Spitz said. “You have to be very cautious on the relay exchanges and make sure nobody gets disqualified, but it should be just a matter of what the time is going to be and who’s going to put the gold medal around their neck first.”