American swimmer Michael Phelps, 23, made Olympic history yesterday with his eighth gold medals, the most won by an athlete in a single Olympics to date. He’s won 16 medals in his career so far, with six gold and two bronze medals in Athens in 2004 and eight in this year’s Olympics in Beijing. He has seven world records in swimming and has been declared “The world’s greatest athlete.”

Sets goals and achieves them
Phelps represents the power of setting goals and working incredibly hard to achieve them. He said at the beginning of this year’s Olympics “If you dream your biggest dream, anything is possible. No matter what you set your imagination to, anything can happen.”

Eats 12,000 calories a day
All that rigorous training takes tons of calories to fuel, and Phelps has to eat about 5-6 times the amount of food an average person requires to get through the day. While he’s training, Phelps eats about a pound of pasta both for lunch and dinner along with nearly an entire pizza and a couple thousand calories worth of energy drinks.

Right conditions for record-setting
The pool used at the Beijing Olympics meets Olympic standards but is 3 meters deeper and 2 lanes wider than past pools, reducing the turbulence that reaches the surface of the water and allowing swimmers to go faster with less resistance.

Phelps and other Olympic athletes are also wearing the latest high-tech Speedo LZR racer suit, which features “ultrasonically welded” seams and is made of a “paper-thin nylon and Lycra blend.” Phelps has described the suit as feeling “like you are a rocket coming off the wall.”

Up next for Phelps are the 2009 World Championships in Rome. After a record-setting eight gold medals, he says he’s not going to rest on his achievements and that “There are some things I still want to do to raise the bar a bit more in the world of swimming. For me, it’s still work in progress.”

Phelps has the world wide open to him after his amazing accomplishments and he’s sure to get some incredibly lucratice endorsement deals. He’s definitely earned them.

Michael Phelps is shown at the Olympics on 8/12, 8/14, and 8/16. He is shown with his teammates on the gold winning US team in the Men’s 4x100M Medley relay Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen, and Jason Lezak. He is also shown with the other winners in the Men’s 100M Butterfly, bronze winner Andrew Lauterstein from Australia, and silver winner Milorad Cavic from Serbia. Credit: PRPhotos.