Michael Phelps got his eighth gold medal today, with the 4x100m medley relay, slashing the world record by 1.34 seconds (3:29.34). With eight on eight in a land fixated on that number, he said later, “Maybe eight is my lucky number too.” The Beijing Games began at 8 pm on 8.08.08. So, “Maybe it was meant to be, I don’t know. For this to happen, everything had to fall in place.”

Ancient mathematicians were manically mystical, and we could stay with the number 8 a while longer. Eight is the first digit that expresses a cube of a whole number (2x2x2). With his 8 golds, Phelps has conquered the Water Cube. Had to be.

This is how desperate Phelps has made us trying to figure out what exactly it is that he’s done by winning the eight races in the way he did.

Great sportspersons are known by the competition they keep. Today four other relay teams registered records. Australia, with 3.30.04, too broke the earlier world record, and set a new standard for the Oceanic region. Bronze medallists Japan set a Asian record, the fourth placed Russians an European standard, and seventh placed South Africa an African record.

The debate had already begun, once Phelps got his seventh gold in the 100m butterfly on Saturday, about who is the greatest Olympian ever. Does his eight-fold swim this month, his career haul of 14 Olympic golds by the age of 23, make his greater than Mark Spitz? Does it take him beyond Carl Lewis, who took four golds at the 1984 Games and returned three times to reclaim the gold in the long jump?

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