KEY POINTS:
The Phelps fever is ramping up. If he arrives at the relays with a chance of him winning those eight medals one of two things will likely happen. One, we cheer the screen, hoping he gets the glory he deserves.
Or, we'll have got fed up and flicked over to Warriors, muttering, 'Where's drowning when you need it!'
It could be truly ugly. Someone closer to Phelps might be thinking more or less the same thing, after the United States team announced Phelps will sit out the relay heats, bringing him in for the finals.
That's a possible door open to sport's dark side.
Imagine you are a member of the US swimming team. Sure, the others might cheer for you. Only, they don't follow you into the water when the gun goes off. You are on your own. You have been on your own for years, grinding towards making an Olympics.
Then you're told you're making up the numbers until the star drops by to scoop the gold. That's real gold. Phelps nailing a hard eight instantly gets him millions of dollars in endorsements. From there they start talking real money.
Its 'no gold medal, no big bucks'. It's also no trip to the White House. You don't see the Oval office, where Harry Truman made the decision to drop the bomb, Ronald Reagan forced the end of the Cold War, Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal doomed his presidency, and no standing where Bill Clinton stood.
You'll go home to fourteen paragraphs and a small photo on an inside page in the local paper and being shortlisted for assistant swimming coach at a junior college.
That's about it.
Does jealously become a factor? Would a little devil somewhere be whispering ' If I can't have it, why should he?
We're talking Salieri eyeing Mozart here.
Killing a relay merely requires going into the water a couple of nanoseconds too soon. The team is disqualified. You make a public apology. You are distraught. You apologise.
You walk away from it.
You didn't get yours. Phelps doesn't get his.
It's gruesome. No one is saying it could happen, and I'm not really thinking it will. Just wondering, that's all.
Photo / AP
