By Bob Markus

From the window of my 15th floor condominium apartment in Ft. Lauderdale, I would be able to see the International Swimming Hall of Fame were it not for the intervening beach front hotel. At any rate, for the past 10 years I have walked by it several times a week on my way to my health club. I have never been in it. Probably never will be.

A non-swimmer, I probably haven't been in a swimming pool since the day I had to jump in and rescue my 3-year-old daughter. She recently turned 41. Since then my idea of going swimming is to find a chair poolside, crack open a book, and order a margarita.

Maybe that's why I can't buy into the notion that Michael Phelps' eight gold medals in the Olympic swimming competition represented the greatest feat in athletic history--or even Olympic games history. Certainly, Phelps deserves congratulations for his unprecedented feat. Eight for eight is eight for eight and you can't do any better than that unless you enter nine events. Some day somebody will, but for now eight for eight is as good as it gets.

But lets have some perspective here. First of all, in winning his eight gold medals, Phelps swam a total of 1,500 meters--the metric mile. Emil Zatopek, a Czechoslovakian runner, went 35 times that far in winning the 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, and marathon races in the 1952 Olympics. Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila twice won the 26-plus mile Olympic marathon running barefooted. Well, of course, Phelps competed barefooted, too, so call that a wash, so to speak.

Then there's this. Swimming is a minor sport, NBC and the Chinese government not withstanding. So is gymnastics. The Olympic Games have always been anchored by track and field. Track is the sun and the other sports revolve around it like the planets. If this were not so they'd have put the swimming pool in the middle of the 91,000 seat Birds' Nest stadium.

Throughout the history of the modern games, the great stories have come from the track and field competion. When they coined the Olympic motto, "swifter, higher, stronger," it is obvious they were talking about running, jumping, and throwing--all of whcih, incidentally, are required in the decathlon, an event I have yet to bring to the discussion. So let's discuss it. Whose the greater athlete, Bob Mathias, who won two Olympic decathlons, the first as a teenager, or Phelps? Decathlete Rafer Johnson or Phelps?

Tales of Olympic glory by track and field athletes would fill a book--and have--several times over. Harrison Dillard winning the 100 meters in 1948 after having failed to make the USA Olympic team in his specialty, the high hurdles, and barely coming in third in the 100 meter trials. Native American Billy Mills, shaving 50 seconds off his personal best, to win the 10,000 meters in 1964. Jesse Owens, winning four gold medals to ruin the 1936 Games for host Adolf Hitler. Paavo Nurmi being the first to win the 5,000 and 10,000 meter runs in the same Olympics, and Peter Snell doing the same for the 800-1500 combo.

Until Mark Spitz won seven gold medals in the 1972 Munich Games, the most famous Olympic swimmers were Duke Kahanamoku, Johnny Weissmuller, and Eleanor Holm. Kahanomoku, winner of three gold medals in 1912 through 1920, was most noted for introducing surfing to the world. He put Hawaii on the map a quarter century before Japan tried to bomb it off the map. As the movie's Tarzan, Weissmuller, winner of five gold medals in swimming (1924-1928), became famous by beating himself on the chest long before it became fashionable for athletes to pound their pecs every time they made the routine play they were getting paid to make. As for Holm, her claim to fame ws getting tossed off the 1936 swimming team by Olympic czar Avery Brundage for sipping champagne too copiously on the voyage across the Atlantic.

It's clear to me that the Chinese scheduled the events in which they were the strongest--swimming and diving and gymnastics--in prime television time in the United States. NBC honchos eagerly went along, knowing that they had a compelling story line in Phelps and that gymnastics held great appeal for the female audience. Until Olga Korbut captivated the U.S. television audience in 1972, nobody paid any attention to gymnastics.

In fact, I covered the '72 Olympics for the Chicago Tribune and I never heard of Olga Korbut until I got back home and heard people rave about her. I did see Romanian gymnast Nadia Comenici come as close to perfection as anyone is likely to get in 1976. Nadia, by the way, was 14 years old at the time and nobody made a fuss about it.

The result of the skewed scheduling of events in the just-completed games was that the two hours plus that NBC devoted to the marathon run probably equalled the time they gave the rest of the track meet. For the most part, the little bit of track competition that was shown came at the cost of sitting through endless hours of gymnastic routines or--even worse--platform diving. Although I have always felt that the 1,500 meter run was the glamour event of the Games, I to this day do not know who won the metric mile in these 2008 Games. If anybody out there knows, please let me in on the secret.

I leave you with this gracious quote from Mark Spitz: "Not only is this guy (Phelps) the greatest swimmer of all time and the greatest Olympian of all time, he's maybe the greatest athlete of all time." Not even close, Mr. Spitz, not even close. Next week I'll tell you why.