Beijing, August 6: The National Aquatics Centre is a stadium of the night. Affectionately called the Water Cube, with its exterior consisting of 3,000 airfilled pockets of translucent plastic, it glows gleaming blue once darkness descends. Then, it actually takes the eye away from the Bird’s Nest next door. Ironically, then, the Water Cube will defy tradition and host swimming finals in the mornings. Such is the pressure of American prime time, and such is the domination of expectations in the Olympics by one American.

The venue is that much more dazzling because it waits to be conquered by the most anticipated individual feat of Beijing 2008. Will Michael Phelps create history by netting eight gold medals? (Mark Spitz got seven golds in Munich 1972. Phelps took six golds and two bronzes in Athens 2004.)

Phelps, hailed as the athlete of this Games, the person who could break new limits for the human species, a man who’s already set 25 world records, slipped into Beijing recently unannounced. Reports put that undetected arrival to the stubble Phelps acquired while training in Singapore. But in a press conference on Wednesday morning, he promised to shave it off before he begins his quest on August 9.

Such is the awe he commands at 23 that he had just to begin fielding questions by saying he felt “pretty good” for most of the six hundred or so hardened and attention-deficit reporters to break out into giggles.

Observers often resort to biological explanations to account for the Phelps phenomenon. His body expels lactic acid in a matter of minutes, they say, draining him of fatigue. His limbs are specially formed, so they bucket away water and give him traction, say others. And his own coach told Sports Illustrated that the Speedo LZR Racer bodysuit he now wears takes two per cent off a swimmer’s best times.

Phelps also showed on Wednesday the brazen right to nonchalance that excellence allows. Asked about his thoughts on going for a record eight golds in a single Olympics, he replied, “I haven’t said anything about breaking any record. My goals have not been published.” Was he playing down expectations? Of course not. Here’s what he said soon after: “I like challenges. When I make my goals, they are all challenges.”

He is also challenging the current orthodoxy on the smog. While most of America’s athletes are training at Dalian to stay away as long as they can, some cyclists got into Beijing this week wearing masks. “I have been here a few times,” said Phelps, referring to the pre-Olympic trips he’s made to Beijing. “I haven’t noticed any breathing problem.” Sure, his routine requires little time outside: “I stay in my room and watch movies all day. But I walk to the dining hall and to the bus.”

Phelps, who famously dislikes the early morning wake-ups that are a part of any serious swimmer’s life, says the morning finals do not worry him: “It’s the Olympic Games. Be ready to swim and compete when you have the opportunity.” And till he hits the competition on August 9, he does, he says, imagine the Water Cube jampacked: “I’m looking forward to being in that atmosphere.”

The water cube

•The National Aquatics Centre will host the swimming, diving and synchronised swimming events

•Construction began on December 24, 2003 and the was delivered on January 28, 2008

•Capacity: 6,000 permanent; 11,000 temporary

•Made of a steel framework of seemingly random polyhedrons covered in soft plastic pillows

•Inspired by a problem about aggregations of bubbles and foams posed by British physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin