Phelps wins eight golds

Mark Spitz won seven golds in Munich. Michael Phelps goes to Beijing for eight. He swims 17 races in nine days. The 4x100 freestyle relay is the one that should have broken the streak: Jason Lezak hunts down France by a fingertip. Phelps hangs on the lane line like a man who has been holding his breath for a decade.

He wins all eight. Some of the times are world records. The body of work is the record. No swimmer, and no Olympian in a comparable program, had stacked a Games like that.

Phelps becomes the most decorated Olympian ever in the years after. Beijing is the week the rest of that pile is built on — a single Games that made the medal table look like a typing error.