This photo took a year worth of planning and testing to pull off! - I bet it wins a Pulitzer Prize!

Snippet from Sports illustrated interview: "... Heinz Kluetmeier: Jeff [Kavanaugh] put all the stuff underwater and I'd be on the computer directing. We have now developed a system where you can get the image from underwater to the computer. You can look at live usage. We moved along with the technology and it's exciting and fun to go from Nikon to Apple. It is a techie's delight and photographer's dream. Jeff probably spent 40 minutes underwater just to move the camera less than an inch -- he probably used up a whole tank of oxygen adjusting the camera. I wanted to be able to see the full body length, plus the touchpad, plus also be able to start the picture before they hit the water. Then after all that work and all that sweat, things can go wrong. We got lucky. We are shooting eight frames a second. You can miss the touch with a hundred frames a second with a high-def camera. We got lucky because as Michael hit the wall, we got the picture. ..." [Link]

'Sports Illustrated' cover of guess who?

Well, we all knew this "Mark Spitz" pose was coming and "Sports Illustrated" got it first.

From the New York Post: "... This one being the first [photo] of him with all eight medals, we hope that our cover will stick in everyone's mind," SI's managing editor Terry McDonell said yesterday.

Phelps' pose is reminiscent of the well-known 1972 photograph of Spitz with his seven gold medals draped across his chest.

Phelps, who also beats Spitz, 5-3, on the number of SI covers on which he's featured, posed in front of a bright-red Chinese screen.

Spitz's famous photo - which never appeared in a magazine but was shot for a poster - netted him $1 million. ..." [Link]

The article is a bit trashy focusing most on how much money he will make rather than what he accomplished.

Also, the amount of medals he has is incomprehensible. He has won more gold medals than many nations put together.

A sloppy finish turns gold into silver and silver into gold for Michael Phelps!

Here is a link to a frame-by-frame set of the Phelps out-touching Cavic at Sports Illustrated. Note that Cavic lifts his head high like before reaching the wall thus retracting his shoulders and hands in the opposite direction while Phelps lunges. I would like to say that I realized all this when watching it last night but Clay was coaching Santa Monica this morning and pointed it out; The video and these photographs concur. [Link]