While there has been too much focus on Michael Phelps and his eight golds, People must remember that sportsmen like Lin Dan and Nadal are equally great, they don't get to compete in 8 to 10 different events. There has been a lot of pressure on him to win this medal and he has delivered. Over the last few years Lin Dan has become synonymous with a machine that consistently wins! At these games he went into sixth gear as someone said, and has been as phenomenal as any other athlete.
Who cares swimming? Dan and Bolt are defenitely above Phelps when we consider the toughness of the oponents and the reputation of the event.
Phelps deserves some credit though, alwaysloss. Other Americans, French, Australian and even Chinese athletes do put up a tough fight.
In a way, its not fair that swimmers, athletes etc. get to take part in so many events, while other sportspersons are restricted to a single sport, and hence fight it out for only one gold medal.
come on...LD is not Phelps....LD has his own achievement as well as Phelps...what's on earth you compare these 2?.....by the way....they do not compare Liu Xiang with Phelps either or Guo Jing Jing with Phelps also.....they play different sports...I do not see that you can compare both......
Well, when people start saying that Phelps is the greatest Olympian ever as opposed to LD just being a normal Olympian ... and you feel that LD dominates his event as does Phelps.
They are supreme and dominating on their own event, but comparing both of them is like comparing apple and orange. I have to say what Phelps has done is a hell of an effort that will take a long time to break. LD has yet to acheive that.
Thats right...not fair to LD also...in Badminton, you can play..may be 3 events? MS. MD and XD.....and each match can last from 30 minutes to 90 minutes....in swimming,...? well..they have different style and time is short too.,..in swimming, wehave butterfly, backstrokes, freestyle....will be fun if Badminton has MS with backhand only...MS with netting only....MS with jumping smashes only..MS with rallies.....
Wah, that would be fun to see more gold medals being awarded in badminton, then maybe every country will get a gold and no one will complain
Yeah, basing it on number of medals is totally flawed! There really is no "greatest Olympian", it's pretty much impossible to say.
i quite agree. there can be a "greatest" Olympic swimmer, but the "greatest" Olympian? Unless of course a particular athlete participates and dominates in a range of 10 sports or something like that.
Add more badminton events! Singles to 5 points per game. Singles to 4 points per game. Singles to 3 points per game. Fastest smash competition. Most accurate shots competition. etc.
for me, the greatest of them all is Sir Steve Redgrave, the british rower. 5 golds spanned over 5 games in an "endurance" event.
How about following badminton events: Right hand event. Left hand event. Plastic Shuttle event. back yard event. Clay ground event. Grass ground event. 5 7-point event 1 25-point event and so on ...
Michael Phelps is a great athlete no doubt. However in my opinion I don't think his gold medals are as prestigious as some other. The reason why I think so is that he has multiple opportunity to win a gold medal. If he fails in one even, then he can just try for another. However, other athletes has one and only one opportunity to win that medal. For athlete like Lin Dan, Nadal, and so many other athletes, they have just one shot at winning the gold medal. There's no such thing as, "If I fail here, I'll try harder in the next event." So I agree that Lin Dan's or others Gold medal is as of equal to Phelps achievements.
Well you couldn't expect much to begin with from someone who is slow and someone who is always losing . Nothing is stopping Lin Dan from jumping in the pool you know But he didn't fail did he? Looking at it another way: he had eight chances to fail and he didn't .
I find it difficult to understand how some people can equate lin dan's 1 gold medal to michael phelps 8 gold medals. If it were so easy to win the swimming events, the chinese people, who are renouwned for their hard work would have conquered it.
