How close was that?
Wow!
I don't know about you, but I sure thought Michael Phelps' pursuit of Olympic history ended Saturday morning here in the 100-meter butterfly.
To the naked eye, it sure looked like Milorad Cavic of Serbia beat him for the gold medal. But to the electronic eye -- the one that matters -- Phelps beat him out for the gold by one-hundreth of a second.
That's the same margin that Portland's Ian Crocker lost the bronze medal to Australian Andrew Lauterstein.
How do you measure that? A blink? Or a muscle twitch?
There is some confusion as to whether the Serbians filed a protest. Originally, meet officials said no, but in the same press conference five minutes later, they said a protest was filed.
Regardless, they said, the Serbians were pleased with what they saw in the videotape proof of the results.
Jamie Fabos, a spokeswomen for USA Swimming, said the tape was reviewed and broken down to one ten-thousandth of a second, and it showed the results were correct.
Anyway, Cavic, in his press conference, showed a lot of class by asking that any protest, if there were one, to be dropped.
"On the scope of what happened, I'm very happy,'' he said. "I don't want to fight this. You have to understand, I came here with the goal to win a bronze. I had my best time and I won a silver, which is better than a bronze.
"For me to end my career now, if that's what I chose, I would be completely happy.''
Crocker, meanwhile, showed no disappointment in his result, despite losing out on a medal. He spent about six minutes talking to the media after the race which, anyone will tell you, is an incredibly long time.
Heck, we don't even get that much time with Tom Brady after a game.
Much has been made about the rivalry between Crocker and Phelps, but it didn't seem like it was very deep.
Crocker praised Phelps after the race, saying what he did was truly incredible.
"For someone who's had the amount of success he's had and crossed the bridge as far as taking swimming to next level, I think he's a really great guy and a guy you're proud to be on his team and able to race next to him,'' said Crocker.
Posted at 11:40 PM
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