So many onlookers thought Milorad Cavic beat Michael Phelps in the Beijing Olympic 100m butterfly. Even Phelps himself.
“To a naked eye, he won the race,” Phelps said in an Omega documentary first published in 2016.
The 10th anniversary of that final -- which Phelps won by .01 on a come-from-behind, half-stroke finish -- is Wednesday night in the U.S./Thursday morning in China.
It marked Phelps’ seventh gold medal of those Games en route to his final tally of eight, breaking Mark Spitz‘s record for golds at a single Games. But it wasn’t without a little controversy.
Years later, Cavic jabbed again about the results that his Serbian federation unsuccessfully protested in Beijing.
“I don’t necessarily feel like it was an injustice,” the Serbian said in the 2016 film. “Mistakes were made on my side. There were things that I could have done better which would have made it a definite victory for myself, but my gut instinct is that I won.”
Cavic was arguably the favorite on the morning of the final. He broke the Olympic record in the preliminary heats, then was again faster than Phelps in the semifinals, when Phelps was coming off a 200m individual medley final.
After the semifinal, Phelps remembered walking down a Water Cube back hallway with coach Bob Bowman after the 15th of 17 total races.
“I said, ‘I’m done. I don’t have any more energy left. I’m cashed,’” Phelps said. “To put it bluntly, [Bowman] said tough s---. You’ve got a couple races to go, and you can suck it up.”
But Phelps was fired up by Cavic’s comments before the race, that it would be good for the sport if Phelps lost in Beijing. He woke up that morning and was on the starting block in lane five, right next to Cavic looking at him in lane four.
“What does a man do when the devil smiles at him? You smile back,” Cavic said. “It was a religious moment for me because I knew I was destined for this day.”
The race went out as expected, with Cavic leading at 50 meters and Phelps in seventh at the turn.
“I watched the NBC coverage of it, and [analyst] Rowdy [Gaines] was pretty much saying that I’m fighting for a silver medal,” Phelps said. “I knew [Cavic] always struggles the last 15 meters. That’s kind of my chance.”
In the last strokes, Phelps felt Cavic’s splash more and more into his own face. He was inching closer and closer. Then that last stroke. Cavic came up a bit short and glided into the wall. Phelps was even shorter, so he took one more partial stroke, slamming his fingers into the wall.
“If I were to take another full stroke, my arms would actually be at the halfway point of my stroke, with my face hitting the wall,” Cavic said. “He knew that he was behind me, and he knew that if he also had a long finish as I did, he would have lost. So his only option was to take another stroke but make it a half-stroke. It’s not textbook. It’s not something any coach ever wants to you to do.”
Phelps said that when he took the last half-stroke rather than a perfect finish, he thought that had cost him the gold. Each man turned around and stared at the scoreboard.
“The lack of oxygen in your body and in your head, it makes things very, very blurry for your eyes,” Cavic said. “It takes a couple of moments just for everything to clear up.”
“I looked back, and I saw one one-hundredth,” Phelps said, “and I was like, holy s---, that just happened.”
As for the Serbian protest and Cavic’s doubts?
“Well, the results don’t lie,” Phelps said. “That’s all I got to say. ... Seeing the [Sports Illustrated] frame-by-frame and watching it in slow-mo, there’s no question in my mind that I won the race.”
That silver was Cavic’s one and only Olympic medal in four Games.
“I will be remembered,” he said. “It was the best and worst thing that happened to me.”
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