One Down, Seven More for Phelps

The mystique stays alive, with uber-star Michael Phelps not disappointing by taking the gold in the 400 IM in world-record fashion.

I think that Phelps will break the Olympic record held by Mark Spitz and will grab eight gold medals. It might be the most anti-climatic thing that happens at these Olympics. Kind of like a horse who has won the first two legs of the Triple Crown and the fizzles out at the Preakness.

So, instead of talking about how awesome that race was by Phelps (he destroyed everyone and broke the world record by almost four seconds) I'll be tracking Phelps' success by comparing him to competing Olympic nations.

There are 204 nations competing at these Games, and not all of them are going to have one gold medal, let alone eight.

As of right now, just looking at the gold medal count, Phelps would be tied for fourth in the number of gold medals. He ties the nations of Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, Romania and the Czech Republic. He also tied the United States if you remove him from the American count.

And if you do take Phelps as an individual nation, only China and South Korea have more gold medals than he.

Of course, these numbers will change. However, as of right now, Phelps has more gold medals than 196 if the nations competing in Beijing during these Olympics. Pretty impressive.