Michael Phelps brought everyone to the edge of their seats this evening in the first heats of the Beijing Games to be settled at the Water Cube, and walked off wondering how that happened. In the heats for the men’s 400m individual medley, till the first 150m, he was within the world record he had set earlier this year in the US trials, and by the time he leisurely finished the last leg, he in any case had chipped more than two-fifths of a second off his Athens Olympic record.

Agencies later reported him as saying about the record: “I am pretty surprised. I didn’t think that I’d be first to get it, not until the finals.”

Till another athlete reveals herself or himself to be capable of breaking the time or space barrier significantly, Phelps will be the most tracked person in Beijing. He has announced, without putting it into so many words, that he wants eight golds.

So, as he plunges in for the finals on Sunday morning — an event that is so heavily ticketed that even the quotas for reporting passes are over-subscribed — he could be on his way to making good that ambition. But even if that race is, by some twist, taken away from him, we will still wonder. How does he do what he does?

Phelps is so effortless in his accomplishments that we reach for proof of exceptionalism to account for him. His body suit (the Speedo LZR Racer). His arms. His metabolism that rapidly expels fatigue causing substances. His shape that concentrates strength in his upper body. The reasons may sound somewhat stretched, though his own coach attests to the time-clipping guarantee of the bodysuit. But the reasons also separate into two categories: advantages that come “naturally” and those that accrue with intervention.

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