By Sam Blacker on SwimSwam
The GOAT turned 40 yesterday and, with all due respect to Lebron, there’s only one person that can be.
Over a career that spanned five Olympics, 16 years, 39 World Records and 46 World and Olympic Gold medals, there have been an absurd number of highs. Perhaps in four or five decades time this list will be truly representative of those, but we’ve distilled them down to the top 40. Without further ado, here they are.
#40 – 200 Butterfly: 1:57.48 – 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials
Having placed second in both heats and semi-finals, resetting his personal best and NAG record both times, Phelps found himself in fourth position with just 50 meters remaining in the final in Indianapolis. He roared home in 30.02 to take second place, out-splitting World Record holder Tom Malchow by nearly two seconds to become the youngest male to make the U.S. Olympic swim team in 68 years.
#39 – 100 Butterfly – 50.77 – 2007 World Championships
#38 – 200 Butterfly: 1:56.50 – 2000 Olympic Games
#37 – 200 Breaststroke: 2:11.30 – 2015 U.S. Nationals
#36 – 400 IM: 4:11.09 – 2002 U.S. Nationals (WR)
#35 – 400 IM: 4:10.73 – 2003 Duel in the Pool (WR)
#34 – 4×100 Medley Relay: 49.72 (butterfly) – 2009 World Championships (3:27.28, WR)
#33 – 4×100 Freestyle Relay: 47.51 (lead-off) – 2008 Olympic Games (AR) (3:08.24, WR)
#32 – 200 Backstroke: 1:54.65 – 2007 U.S. Nationals
#31 – 100 Freestyle: 47.92 – 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials
At the time, this made Phelps the fourth-fastest swimmer in history. He’d ended 2007 as the fastest 100 freestyler in the world that year. The 400 IM World Record holder isn’t supposed to be able to do that.
30 – 200 Butterfly: 1:53.71 – Columbia Grand Prix (WR)
Phelps was sporting a full goatee at this meet, and as untapered, unshaved swimmers often do, broke a World Record.
#29 – 200 Backstroke: 1:55.30 – 2004 U.S. Nationals
His lesser-known 200 backstroke performance, this one was actually closer to the World Record (1:55.15) than his 2007 swim.
#28 – 100 Backstroke: 53.01 – 2007 U.S. Nationals
Phelps was 0.03 seconds off Aaron Peirsol‘s World Record, which meant he was three-hundredths away from ending that summer with World Records in four different strokes.
#27 – 100 Butterfly: 50.45 – 2015 U.S. Nationals
Phelps’ fastest time in textile.
#26 – 200 Freestyle: 1:45.23 – 2004 Olympic Games (AR)
#25 – 400 IM: 4:08.26 – 2004 Olympic Games (WR)
Phelps’ first Olympic title.
#24 – 200 IM: 1:54.23 – 2008 Olympic Games (WR)
#23 200 IM: 1:54.75 – 2015 U.S. Nationals
This time has only been beaten three times in the decade since it was swum: Phelps himself (1:54.66, 2016), Wang Shun (1:54.62, 2023) and Leon Marchand (1:54.06, 2024).
#22 – 200 Butterfly – 1:52.03 – 2008 Olympic Games (WR)
#21 – 200 Butterfly: 1:54.58 – 2001 World Championships (WR)
Going 1:54.58 at 16 years of age is impressive enough – it took more than two decades for anyone else to be that quick that young – but this was his second World Record and first World title. The foundations for even more success in the future were there, and they were rock-solid.
#20 – 200 IM: 1:56.04 – 2003 World Championships (WR)
#19 – 400 IM: 4:05.25 – 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials (WR)
#18 – 200 Butterfly: 1:51.51 – 2009 World Championships (WR)
#17 – 4×100 Medley Relay: 50.33 (Butterfly) – 2016 Olympic Games (3:27.95 – OR)
This swim to me showed everything that made Phelps so good – phenomenal underwaters, control, an understanding of exactly what he needed to do, and a cold, calculated relentlessness. Off the turn he watched James Guy next to and ahead of him for his entire underwater phase – Guy was no longer ahead at the end of that. This split would be phenomenally good for a 100 fly specialist today – it still ranks 26th all-time – and Phelps really was always more of a 200 swimmer, 31 years old, and jammed the turn. For his final ever race he showed just how high his ceiling was, and went out on a hell of a high.
#16 – 200 IM: 1:54.27 – 2012 Olympic Games
#15 – 100 Butterfly: 50.58 – 2008 Olympic Games (OR)
#14 – 200 IM: 1:54.98 – 2007 World Championships (WR)
#13 – 400 IM: 4:06.22 – 2007 World Championships (WR)
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#12 – 4×100 Medley Relay: 50.15 (Butterfly) – 2008 Olympic Games (#1 split)
It really was fitting that in the race that gave Phelps his 8th gold medal of the Games, he was the difference maker. Although the toughest may have come in his 4×100 freestyle relay from France, these three-and-a-half minutes would be the ones that would define whether or not Phelps surpassed Mark Spitz‘s achievement 36 years previously. Without Phelps Australia outsplit the U.S. by two-tenths of a second: with him they won by seven-tenths.
#11 – 4×200 Freestyle Relay: 1:43.31 (lead-off) – 2008 Olympic Games
#10 – 200 Butterfly: 1:54.92 – 2001 U.S. Nationals (WR)
The youngest World Record Holder in history (15 years, 9 months), over a year younger than Ian Thorpe was when he set the 400 free record back in 1999. He’d shown he was special in Sydney – in Irvine he became transcendent.
#9 – 100 Butterfly: 49.82 – 2009 World Championships (WR)
#8 – 200 IM: 1:54.16 – 2011 World Championships
It seems almost unjust that Phelps, the most transformative IM swimmer in history, would swim his best-ever time in the 200 in a race he came second in, but what a race it was.
#7 – 4×100 Freestyle – 47.12 (flying) – 2016 Olympic Games
Phelps hadn’t broken 49 seconds since 2014, when he was 48.88 on the leadoff of this relay at the Pan Pacific Championships. This split was fourth-fastest in the field and ranked #36 all-time when he hit the wall – for a swimmer who’d officially retired four years earlier and in what was debatably his sixth-best event. Fabien Gilot, whom Phelps had blasted past with a turn Bob Bowman had described as “maybe the best turn that’s ever been done”, described him after the race as an ‘extraterrestrial’.
#6 – 200 Freestyle: 1:43.86 – 2007 World Championships (WR)
Phelps had finished 3rd in the ‘Race of the Century’ three years earlier. Now he was back-to-back World champion and had taken Thorpe’s World Record. A fly guy who’d turned into an IM-and-fly guy, Phelps had now successfully hijacked freestyle as well with a dominant win in Melbourne. His final turn in this race is almost certainly one of the top-10 ever.
#5 – 200 IM: 1:55.94 – 2003 U.S. Nationals (WR)
He’d hacked off more than two seconds from Jani Sievinen‘s World record already in 2003, culminating in a first world title which he won by more than three seconds, but U.S. Nationals two weeks later was certainly not the arena in which he’d expected to break it again. In just six weeks, he’d lowered the mark from Sievinen’s 1:58.16 to 1:55.94. That is more time than has been taken off in the 22 years since.
He was under world record pace on all three of butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke. He closed in 27.59 to crack 1:56 when breaking 1:59 was an achievement for rest of the world, and the only reason that he broke his mark from Barcelona by only a tenth was because he had closed in a rather obscene 27.20 there.
Phelps won this race by the exact same margin that he had won at the World Championships: 3.62 seconds. Kevin Clements dropped two seconds to go 1:59.56, a tenth faster than Ian Thorpe had been two weeks prior.
4 – 200 Butterfly: 1:52.09 – 2007 World Championships (WR)
He won this race by three seconds, and broke his own World Record by 1.62 seconds. Even ignoring the fact that he swam faster in both 2008 and 2009, this would rank Phelps third all-time today. The two men ahead of him are possibly the greatest two-distance butterfly swimmer ever and possibly the greatest Swiss-army knife of a swimmer ever. The ‘possibly’ there for both Kristof Milak and Leon Marchand is entirely due to the existence of Michael Phelps.
Those swims in 2008 and 2009 may have been faster, but were in a full bodysuit whereas he swam in a jammer in Melbourne. Fully suited, this would probably have been under the 1:51 barrier.
He was out half a second under his world record here, and ruthlessly, relentlessly, pulled away from the field. The final 50 was a procession, with even the World Record line almost a bystander, trying desperately to hang onto Phelps’ wash. Before this meet there was perhaps some debate about whether Ian Thorpe or Michael Phelps was the best swimmer of the new millenium. This race was perhaps the clearest indication that it was the latter.
#3 200 IM: 1:54.66 – 2016 Olympic Games
This was half a second off his best, but with everything that had happened in the preceding four years the fact that he was this good, this quick, was quite simply majestic. The 200 IM seemed to age most gracefully of all Phelps’ events, but Rio was just over 13 years since his first World Record in the event.
He was locked in a battle with Thiago Periera and Ryan Lochte for the first 100, with only 0.01 separating the trio at halfway. He opened an advantage up before absolutely crushing the freestyle leg. Pereira and Lochte were burned and fell away like Icarus, all the way off the podium. Kosuke Hagino, the 400 IM champion, finished 1.95 seconds behind him. Lochte, the only man to ever beat Phelps head-to-head in this event, was fifth in 1:57.47.
Phelps became the first swimmer in history to win an event at four consecutive Olympics with this victory. The time he won in was 0.32 seconds faster than he had been at the 2007 World Championships, one he called his best. The longevity and the sheer dominance he displayed in Rio was an absolute joy to see.
#2 – 400 IM: 4:03.84 – 2008 Olympic Games (WR)
Phelps’ first race in Beijing, his performance here proved beyond all doubt that he was ready for the task of challenging Mark Spitz‘s seven gold medal haul from 1972. He’d broken his world record by a second at U.S. Trials, and had set an Olympic record of 4:07.82 in the heats (which were held the night before, with morning finals).
Phelps led the field on fly, pulled away from Lochte down the second 50 of backstroke and then kept him at bay on the breaststroke. Laszlo Cseh was never far away, but with a dramatically improved breaststroke compared to his previous Olympic appearance four years ago Phelps never, ever looked like finishing second. He closed in a 56-point on the freestyle split to lead his two great rivals home.
This was Phelps’ longest reigning record, lasting 15 years before being broken by Leon Marchand. He took this event so far beyond the reach of the rest of both his own and the next generation, and this performance in Beijing became its epitome, a synecdoche of the way in which he changed the sport.
#1 – 200 Freestyle, 2007, Melbourne World Championships (WR)
“I look at that race, and today, still, and say that’s probably my best race I’ve ever swam in my life from start to finish. It was kind of over at 15 meters. I was in the best shape possible. My stroke was perfect. Everything about that race, to me, was the best.”.
We’ll go with you on this one Michael.
His goal for this race had been 1:43.5. Instead, he hacked nine-tenths of a second off a world record that already looked nigh-on untouchable. Phelps was now more than a second faster than all-time #2 Ian Thorpe, and there were only four swimmers within 2.5 seconds of his World Record: Thorpe, Pieter van den Hoogenband, Park Tae Hwan and Peter Vanderkaay.
Phelps had the lead decisively by 15, and quite frankly was in a race of his own from then on. The final gap to second (1.89 seconds) was the largest in Olympic history in this event.
‘Superlative’ is perhaps the best and only way to describe this performance.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: 40 For 40: Michael Phelps’ 40 Best Performances
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