All I'm saying is that Phelps would have still been a champion swimmer if he had also played other sports. He might not have been a champion marathoner (a sport

All I'm saying is that Phelps would have still been a champion swimmer if he had also played other sports. He might not have been a champion marathoner (a sport which seems specially selected to disadvantage his long-arms short-legs physique), but his time spent running would not have kept him out of the Olympics as a swimmer. I suspect he probably did all sorts of regular-kid activities between the ages of seven, when he learned to swim, and ten, when he set a national age-group record. I personally learned to dog-paddle at three, so we know that some of his 10yo competitors had years more practice than he had. Others ITT overestimate the importance of practice. Yeah, sure, Phelps practiced swimming a great deal. We know for a fact that he practiced each particular event less than most of his competitors in that particular event, just from the sheer range of different events he dominated. He only has the same 24 hours in a day that anyone else has. Perhaps there is a symmetry between "many competitors with maximum talent, differentiated by preparation" and "many competitors with maximum preparation, differentiated by talent". I would nominate auto racing, modern yacht racing, or doping-allowed bicycle racing as sports that fit in the first category, although I'm sure there are aficionados who would disagree. Swimming, and any sport that features human bodies without chemical modification maneuvering under their own power through some medium, is firmly in the second. That comes both from nature and from our collective sense of fairness. Fortunately they've outlawed the polyurethane suits, in no small part due to Phelps's boycott of events allowing them. When he claimed that his records had only been broken through the use of technology, most swim fans agreed. In fact, in most sports, talent varies to such an extent that superior talent dominates superior preparation, so long as the preparation varies only by a limited amount.