Breakfast of Champions
So, Michael Phelps is a really impressive swimmer. But did you know that he’s also a championship eater as well? According to the NY Post, he gobbles down 12,000+ calories a day. When you compare this with the fact that he still manages to look as lean and slick as a sci-fi movie torpedo,* I’m tempted to say I’m more impressed with this than with his swimming. Or maybe it’s just jealousy that he’s actually living the dream: eating like that and looking like that. The whole thing reminds me of Brad Pitt’s character from Ocean’s 11; in that film, Pitt decided to make fun of his own image by chawing down on terrible, greasy foods in pretty much every scene, the not-so-subtle point being that you can’t really eat like that and look like Brad Pitt. The takeaway from that Post piece, though, is, well… maybe you can?
*Seriously, I don’t care whether or not the guy can act: I think we’ve found our Namor.
Phelps rocks. I loved that tic in Oceans 11, and it’s nice to see a movie cliche – you can be a superhot badass special forces ninja with absolutely zero effort – gently mocked. On the other hand, watching Jason Statham doing pull ups in Death Race? Inspirational.
— mark · Aug 13, 03:20 PM · #
Peter, just a quick comment (if this cursed iPhone will let me) go congratulate you on your choice of post titles. “Breakfast of champions” here gave me a chuckle and, upon searching for TAS posts on The Dark Knight, which I just saw, I just saw “Bat-lash,” which was pretty humorous too.
Utterly related to what you’re saying as you can see.
— PEG · Aug 13, 03:22 PM · #
Wow. When we learned my wife was pregnant with triplets, she started eating 4,000 calories a day, which seemed like constant food intake. (Thanks, Five Guys!) I can’t imagine doing that at every meal.
— Matt Frost · Aug 13, 05:33 PM · #
BTW, isn’t Jason Statham being considered for the role of Namor?
— Mark · Aug 13, 06:41 PM · #
Can we stop reflexively calling Phelps “the greatest Olympian ever”? Swimming gives an individual athlete more opportunities to medal than any other sport. Carl Lewis didn’t have 8 chances to win gold. Even if someone could run the 100, 200, 400, 800, etc. all at gold-medal level, the simple logistics of heats and races in the meet prevent it. And how about a dominant athlete who can only compete in one event at the Olympics? A Greco-Roman wrestler gets one shot, his weight-class. Why penalize a dominant one event champion because his sport doesn’t have the same number of opportunities as Michael Phelps’s sport?
— Freddie · Aug 13, 08:53 PM · #
Freddie: Was that directed at me? Anyone here? I don’t think I called him the greatest, nor anything similar. What I said was that he’s “really impressive.” I stand by that description, and I agree that not enough attention has been paid to the structural differences in different Olympic sports that give him a special advantage.
— Peter Suderman · Aug 13, 08:57 PM · #
It’s directed at NBC’s Olympic coverage. Can’t I engage in a little Olympics-related water cooler talk around here? I thought people were just riffing on the Olympics. I wasn’t critiquing anyone here.
— Freddie · Aug 13, 10:27 PM · #
To second Freddie’s complaint, there’s a lot of talk about this (Phelps = greatest athlete ever) on ESPN Radio, for what that’s worth. Hell, the guy hasn’t even won his 18 golds or whatever.
— Klug · Aug 14, 12:13 AM · #
Freddie — gotcha. General anti-NBC kvetching definitely allowed.
— Peter Suderman · Aug 14, 02:22 AM · #
I third Freddie’s statements. All I can say is… GYMNASTICS! Seriously, there seems to be way more difficult and athletically impressive sports out there than swiming that simply don’t get as many opportunities to demonstrate consistent success. Even if a gymnast wins the team gold, all-around, and the five events, he’d still only be able to total 7 in one olympics.
I’m biased against Phelps because of really irresponsible hearsay from a track-athlete friend of mine. It’s not the best reasoning for disliking the guy, but I’m sticking to my guns.
Also, does anyone think maybe Michael Phelps won’t live long? Not that I wish this upon the guy, but eating 12,000 calories a day can’t be good for your body, no matter how much you exert youself (and for that matter, so much exertion takes a significant toll on the body in terms of overall stress).
— Joshua Xiong · Aug 14, 01:49 PM · #
I’d be content with calling Phelps “the best swimmer ever,” and I’m sure he’d be satisfied with that. I agree that there are sports out there that are more grueling, challenging and skill-demanding than swimming. Gymnastics, however, has a few problems:
a.) Subjective scoring. People like head-to-head competition, not being bogged down in start values, dismounts etc. Cirque de soleil includes some insane athletic feats, but its not amenable to objectively scored competition. Thats the way I feel about gymnastics.
b.) Nobody cares. And neither will you a few weeks after the olympics.
And I don’t want to hear complaints about all the swimming medals. Chinese are winning them to. I have more reason to complain about all the divisions of diving that have medals that the Chinese will sweep while American dominant sports like baseball and basketball only have one medal/gender.
Biologically your reasoning about Phelps’ life-span is sound, but he’s such a physical freak that its probably not prudent to apply that trend to him.
— dave · Aug 15, 12:19 AM · #
This news offers us a glimpse, perhaps, at Mr. Phelps’s post-swimming career. In 2013 or so, check your local listings: Kobayashi v. Phelps, live from Coney Island.
— K. M. Hagen · Aug 15, 02:19 AM · #
An NBC report said he spends 5 hours a day swimming, so that must burn some calories. I imagine him in 20 years with a pot belly, a wife, and several children.
You have to sort through a lot of NBC commentators swooning and messing around to get to actual Olympic news.
— Joules · Aug 15, 03:48 AM · #
Dave,
I think subjective scoring attests to how difficult and impressive certain sports are. In fact, David Stern corruption aside, that might be one of the reasons professional basketball has so many disputed calls.
It’s true that nobody pays much attention to gymnastics, but it’s also true that nobody pays that much attention to swimming. My brother swims, so I don’t want to bash the sport, but it’s not the most interesting to watch.
And China may be winning bogus diving medals, but it’s not calling its divers the “greatest olympic champions” of all time. The Americans are doing exactly that regarding Phelps. The point here is that doing variations of the same thing over and over again, however good at it you may be, doesn’t qualify you as some athletic god.
I’d much rather see repeated success in a sport that has a much richer combination of athleticism and skill ie. basketball, soccer, gymnastics, etc.
— Josh Xiong · Aug 15, 05:33 AM · #
Forget about it. Gymnastics isn’t close to basketball, baseball or soccer, (etc). Nice try though.
— Dave · Aug 25, 09:52 PM · #