On August 2, 2008, this white man, in an on-line conversation with his US pal Johnny Du made the following quote: "Oh, and hey, just to get the Beijing pot stirring a little...do u really think Michael Phelps will win his 8 golds and bust Spitz's record? Phelps will always be a wannabe compared to the great Thorpedo! "
Well far be it for this white man to shie away from the awful truth - and the truth is this...the white man was proved wrong! In lieu of the fact that Michael Phelps has writted himself into Olympic sporting immortality by winning eight gold medals along with seven world records in Beijing, I now concede that Michael Phelps is the greatest swimmer and Olympian of all time. He deserves this mantle unreservedly and this white man eats his words accordingly! And by the way, Ian Thorpe had better eat his humble pie as well. Click the link to see Thorpedo views shot out of the water by the great man Phelps...
Michael Phelps is a sporting phenomenon. He has qualities that, I must admit, initially grate against the traditional Australian psyche. He's brash, confident, self-assured, wears his heart on his sleeve and many Aussies would say downright arrogant. He's so 'American' the Australians complain. Well, Phelps was the one who had the temerity to proudly predict the downfall of the Olympic pinnacle they called Mount Spitz - seven gold medals at one Olympic meet. He was the one who laid out his audacious plan to secure eight gold medals and he never backed away from his goal. The cynics all took their best shots and the naysayers doubted that such an individual program was humanly possible. In the midst of it all Phelps stood tall and delivered on his promised eight gold medals.
And this white man wonders to himself...would an Australian have the self-belief & inner fortitude to attempt what Michael Phelps did?
Would we have the courage to 'put ourselves out there' and risk the ridicule of a doubting majority?
Do Australians ever really open up their vulnerability by publicly dreaming their dreams regardless of what anyone else thinks?
Sometimes this white Australian man believes that his own countrymen are so obsessed by shooting down others when they fail (including our own, definitely our own!) that we don't fully risk our all to achieve the impossible. We truly are a country of 'knockers' and I think we can learn something from the likes of Michael Phelps and our other trans-Pacific neighbours. For what I am still naturally inclined to call American arrogance I now re-assess as being healthy and shameless self-belief. Maybe we could do with some of that once in a while!
Oh, and Johnny... this white man publicly retracts his above comments and readily eats his words but still takes solace in the fact that Michael Phelps, whilst American...well, he's still white!
God bless America!
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