Aug 11 2008
Phelps and Team America Make French Eat Their Words.
“The Americans? We are going to smash them. That’s what we came here for.” If there was such a thing as locker room inspiration, those three sentences that Frenchman Alain Bernard told a newspaper were more than enough to fuel the fire for the American 4X100m swimteam.
Before a packed “Water Cube” in Beijing, which included President Bush, Michael Phelps started the race and Garret Weber-Gale and Cullen Jones followed, but the real excitement was the last leg. The French seemed to have a sure-fire gold medal when they led by half a body length with one lap to go, but the gutsy performance by Jason Lezak who overhauled trash talker extraordinaire Alain Bernard was the deciding factor. Lezak swam a 46.0 anchor….the fastest in history, to overtake Bernard by eight one-hundreths of a second. The win also shattered the world record at three minutes 08:24 seconds.
Lezak said after the race, “To be honest, I’ve been on the last two relays where we have come up short, but I was real tired of losing. I just wanted to bring this back the United States. It felt amazing.”
Cullen Jones followed with, “We love hearing people talk stuff about us, it just fuels us.”
