Michael Phelps is still perfect in the Beijing Olympics, now 5 for 5, with three events remaining. Even if he were not to approach the water another time in these Olympics, he would undoubtedly go down in history as possibly the greatest athlete in the modern Olympics, surpassing the greats of Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz and a select few others.

On Wednesday (Tuesday night in the U.S.), Michael Phelps won the men's 200-meter butterfly. An hour later he was a member of U.S. 4x200m freestyle relay team that won another gold medal, thus making him the winningest athlete in Olympic history, now with 11 gold medals, smashing through the previous mark of 9 gold medals total, held by a small number of athletes in a very select club. And it isn't done yet.

The U.S. men didn't just set the world record, they destroyed it by being the first team to post a time under 7 minutes in the event. Their 6:58.56 was 4.68 seconds faster than the previous record, also set by the U.S. men at the 2007 World Championships.

The silver medalists from Russia finished more than five seconds behind.

"For four years we knew we could probably get under 7 minutes," Lochte said in a poolside interview with NBC. "It's great to finally do it."

Even more amazing than the medal total is Phelps has a world record in every final.

In the first of his two races, Phelps touched in 1:52.03 for his fourth gold medal and fourth world record in Beijing. The mark had been 1:52.09, set by Phelps at the 2007 Worlds.

That race was closer than Phelps anticipated. Two other competitors went under 1:53. Laszlo Cseh of Hungary took silver in 1:52.70 and Japan's Takeshi Matsuda won the bronze in 1:52.97.

As he came off the pool deck, Phelps disclosed that his goggles had filled with water, adding, "I could not believe how close to me those guys were."

Phelps disclosed later that day he was bothered with a goggle problem even though he broke his own world mark.

"As soon as I dove in, they filled up," he said. "I was more or less trying to count my strokes, hoping I'd be dead on at the turns," he said. "I'm disappointed because I know I can go faster, but there was nothing I could do. I handled it the best way I could."

As it turned out, he handled a bad situation perfectly. He was dead on at the turns and he didn't seem to lose a stroke, blind or not.

On Friday, Michael will compete in the 200m individual medley; the 100m butterfly Saturday and the 4x100m medley relay, with prelims on Friday and the final Sunday.

Michael now has a chance for rest before resuming his quest for a perfect 8 and eclipsing Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals in a single Olympiad.

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