Jewish Jock Helps Phelps Make Olympic History
Poor Mark Spitz. The middle-aged motivational speaker and former swimmer can no longer be “considered the Greatest Olympic athlete of all-time,” now that Michael Phelps has won eight gold medals in one Olympics this morning, surpassing Spitz’s seven in 1972.
Spitz can actually thank a fellow Jew for this development. Jason Lezak, who won bronze in the 100-meter freestyle but, more importantly, swam the anchor leg in the 4×100 freestyle relay that helped push the U.S. team — including Phelps — to gold on Monday, pulled a golden repeat today.
Following U.S. teammates Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen and Phelps, Lezak dove into lane four to swim the anchor leg, or final position, of the Men’s 4 x 100 meter medley relay, and touched the finish .7 seconds ahead of the second-place Australians, to give his team a record time of 3:29.34.
“I was thinking, ‘Don’t blow the lead,’” Lezak said. “I was really nervous going in because anything can happen in a one race … I knew Eamon [Sullivan of Australia] was definitely capable of catching me. I wanted to take it out hard and finish as strong as I could.”
The race gave Phelps his record-breaking eighth gold medal for the 2008 games.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO