MICHAEL PHELPS DOES IT!

With a world record in the 200m Butterfly, Michael Phelps is the athlete with the most gold medals in Olympic history.

He stands alone, towering above all others.

Phelps touched in 1:52.03 his fourth gold medal and fourth world record in Beijing. The mark had been 1:52.09, set by Phelps at the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia.

Along with the four golds he has now won in Beijing, Phelps won six at the 2004 Athens Games. Phelps also won two bronze medals in 2004.

Coming into Wednesday's action at the Water Cube, Phelps stood at nine career Olympic golds, tied with four others for most career golds, among them Mark Spitz and track star Carl Lewis.

Spitz still holds the mark for most golds won by one athlete in a single Olympics, seven in Munich in 1972.

That's the next goal in Phelps' sights.

Four gold medals. Four world records.
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Phelps work was not done for the day.

From the New York Times:

Less than an hour [after winning gold in the 200m butterfly], Phelps led off the United States’ 4x-200 freestyle relay in 1:43.31, almost three seconds faster than his nearest competitor, to set the tone for the Americans’ rousing victory. The squad of Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Ricky Berens and Peter Vanderkaay clocked a 6:58.56 — the first sub-seven minute performance — to finish 5.14 seconds ahead of the runner-up, Russia, which was only 0.46 seconds off the listed world record.

In a sport where races often are decided by hundredths of a second, Phelps, 23, has won three of his five golds here by a margin of 1.89 seconds or more.

“There’s nobody in any sport that can win like he wins,” Reese said. “He’s not just winning, he’s crunching world records and crunching the fields. It’s amazing.”

Amazing.