When you set (or are a part of) 7 world records, that's not luck. That's dedication and hard work. Luck is when you're losing and the guy ahead has his bathing suit split.
Did I say he was lucky in every event? No. You say dedication and hard work. What have I posted? Nobody is doubting his talent and skill. What about the race where he didn't break the world record? In one of his races 5 teams broke the world record and the team barely won. A little luck was involved in him getting 8 golds.
Or luck could be when you're losing the entire race and when you reach the end, the leader makes the smallest of errors and you end up touching the wall a hundredth of a second sooner. Or an opponent gives you bulletin board material to fire your team up, and your anchor has the race of his life to surpass a world record holder who tightened up ever so slightly which allowed your team to win...again...by 1/100th of a second. Those are the types of breaks Phelps needed to achieve this feat...and those are the types of breaks he DIDN'T get in Athens. Again, look at his reaction after the 100 fly...he knew he was the benefit of some good fortune there.
Jesus. What an incredible run. That's not a bad week all in all when you go 8 for 8 in your events . A nice bit of luck too
Looks like Phelps' fingers touched the wall at the water line, out of view. That's what .01 seconds difference looks like.
I'm amazed that Phelps did it and this is an incredible accomplishment but do we really need to keep on talking about this? C'mon NBC show some actual competition than another interview and replay of Phelps.
I just guess that your idea of luck is different than mine. To me, luck is when something out of the ordinary occurs that enables you to win when your performance isn't necessarily up to par. I simply don't think any luck was involved in his winning any of his 8 gold medals. There were some incredible performances that aided that endeavor, especially Lezak's amazing split in the 4x100, but if you consider that lucky, do you consider Bob Beamon's long jump lucky? incidentally, in the one race he was not part of a world record, he did set an Olympic record. You are certainly entitled to think otherwise.
