In Beijing, phenom Phelps causes a splash around the world

BEIJING (AP) — Quick quiz: What has 13 letters and means global phenomenon?

Easy.

Answer: Michael Phelps.

The Beijing Olympics have belonged to one man, a 23-year-old American swimmer from Baltimore who has become a household name from the Philippines to Peru and Cairo to Caracas.

With his sensational gold medal and world record haul so far, Phelps has transcended Olympic sports and exploded onto the planet’s consciousness as a once-in-a-lifetime supernova.

“He doesn’t swim — he flies,” said the sports daily Ole in Argentina.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge calls him simply “the icon of the games.”

Phelps’ feats have drawn banner headlines across the world, including in regions and countries where swimming normally gets scant attention, with newspapers and commentators tripping over one another for superlatives and nicknames:

“The barracuda from Baltimore,” said Chile’s largest newspaper, El Mercurio.

“The New Olympic Legend,” blared Egypt’s El Badeel.

“The American dolphin,” wrote Spain’s El Pais.

“The God of Olympia,” intoned France’s Nouvel Nouvel Observateur.

“The water man from another planet,” hailed Denmark’s Berligske Tidende.

“At a time when world records seemed to have hit the ceiling of what’s physically possible to wrestle out of the human organism, Phelps has been the man who managed to push the limits with his magnificent performance,” the Danish paper said.

With the Chinese team running away with so many golds, the Phelps phenomenon has hardly been the center of attention in the host country, though it has not gone unnoticed. Friday’s newspapers’ headlines were all about another swimmer, Liu Zige, who won the 200-meter butterfly, giving China its first swimming gold of the games.

Chinese media have dubbed Phelps’ the “flying fish” or the “American superfish.” One editorial cartoon showed Phelps as a shark overtaking a torpedo. China’s most popular sports newspaper, the Titan Weekly — which is running daily editions during the games — made Phelps one of its two front-page stories Thursday. It ran a large photo of a joyous Phelps under the headline “His Majesty Phelps.”

The world has shown a special fascination with Phelps’ diet, which counts an amazing 12,000 calories a day — six times what a normal adult male eats. For example, his breakfast includes three fried-egg sandwiches, an omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast, three chocolate chip pancakes and two cups of coffee.

“Any average adult human being needs some 2,500 daily calories to live a life without excesses,” Argentina’s Ole said. “Of course when you’re in the presence of a monster like Michael Phelps, those parameters can go to hell.”

A tongue-in-cheek letter in The Age may have best summed up the world’s amazement. “Is it true,” wrote reader Pat Lester, “that Michael Phelps can take a three-minute shower in 21‚Ñ2 minutes?”