Remember when you were a kid and your older siblings would take your toys and hold them over your head? Well, that's what Michael Phelps is doing with the Olympic record book. Phelps is on pace to break the record for gold medals won in a single Olympic games (7) and the all-time number (9). In the process, he and virtually every other swimmer is setting world records in pretty much every event, which leads to my biggest question/concern.
Yeah, I'm happy for Phelps. I'm even happier an American is having this sort of international success, but what happens after the Olympics? You know, these Olympics in which every swimming record is being broken...
Records are meant to be broken, but isn't there an imaginary, perhaps definite, threshold for any record? What happens when a record becomes unbreakable? It's great, I suppose, for the person who sets the record, but what about everyone else?
It's like being that 4 year-old watching his big brother dance around the room with his Tickle Me Elmo over his head. And for fans, isn't the possibility of broken records part of the Olympics' appeal? So, as records near that unbreakable pantheon, does that mean future Olympic games will be more boring?
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