Michael Phelps Wins 100m Fly, Seventh Gold on Final Stroke

With just five meters left to go in the 100-meter butterfly final on Saturday morning, Michael Phelps realized that he had misjudged the finish. In order to defeat the Serbian Milarad Cavic, who was having perhaps the greatest race of his career, Phelps found himself left with only two choices. He could either glide to the wall as he kicked like crazy, or take an extra, awkward half-stroke.

Most swimmers would have impulsively chosen to glide, but Phelps proved by the slimmest of margins what sets him apart. With Olympic history hanging in the balance, Michael Phelps decided to take one more stroke. His long arms soared above the water, windmilled past his ears and slammed into the wall, while Cavic hit the timing pad in full glide. Both of the swimmers immediately spun around and stared up at the video screen. In the moments that it took for the scoreboard to unscramble the results, one could feel the great tension course through the large crowd of spectators inside Beijing’s National Aquatics Center.

Phelps ended up coming in with a time of 50.58 seconds, his personal best and an Olympic record, winning over Cavic by a whisker, who came in just one-hundredth of a second behind. It was Michael Phelps seventh Gold Medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, tying Mark Spitz’s record from the 1972 Munich Games.

Michael Phelps Wins the 100m Butterfly Final

Phelps Receives His Seventh Gold Medal in the 2008 Olympics

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