Michael Phelps "probably" is not Greatest Olympian

[Bobber]

According to this guy....

Coe: Michael Phelps 'probably not' the greatest Olympic athlete ? USATODAY.com

This is amusing.

[cstrunk]

"I let my swimming do the talking." - Michael Phelps.

[BuffettClone]

Of course he thinks it should be a British athlete

[CyBroncos]

Spitz had nine gold medals when he retired at the age of 22 after the Munich Olympics. It would have been interesting to see how many he would have finished with if he had competed in Montreal in 1976

[mred]

It's a good point, though, that you can't just look at the medal count. A good swimmer can get a lot more medals than people in most other sports can.

[3TrueFans]

Best ever by a huge margin, not even a discussion to be had.

[Knownothing]

I am not sure if he aint right. Swimming has so many chances of medals compared to a lot of other sports. Like Owens only had a few events he could compete in. I would even say Carl lewis competed in a few different things that were different i.e. 100 meter sprint is differnt than the long jump.
I realize there are different strokes and so on in swimming. Just way more chances to win medals.

[rebecacy]

According to this guy....

Coe: Michael Phelps 'probably not' the greatest Olympic athlete ? USATODAY.com

This is amusing.

Coe is a track and field guy. He is biased.

[cobraclone71]

Haters are going to hate.

[3TrueFans]

Just because there are more medal opportunities doesn't mean that just because you can swim automatically means you have a chance at all these medals. The fact that he is/was so good in so many events is proof of how much better he is than anyone else.

[CLONECONES]

is this guy in subway commercials?

that's what I thought

[mred]

One thing on his side is doing what he did in back-to-back olympics. That's very hard to do in a sport where people are over-the-hill quickly.

[twistedredbird]

Coe is a track and field guy. He is biased.

track athletes could do as many events as Phelps if there were talented enough.

Phelps does a variety of distances, most track athletes/runners do one, maybe two, but usually just one, like many swimmers who specialize in one stroke at one distance.

The fact that Phelps does a variety of strokes, a variety of distances seems somewhat comparable to me.

[jdoggivjc]

is this guy in subway commercials?

that's what I thought

I thought Subway dropped him from the commercials after the bong incident.

And despite my comments in the Olympic thread last night, I do think he probably is the greatest Olympian. I just think he could be having a better 2012 Olympics.

[Cy94]

Spitz had nine gold medals when he retired at the age of 22 after the Munich Olympics. It would have been interesting to see how many he would have finished with if he had competed in Montreal in 1976

He also won all his medals with a big *** mustache.