Mind Boggling

Michael Phelps was flipping through TV channels in his Melbourne hotel room last Friday when, for the first time all week, he was stopped cold. Phelps had come across Pardon the Interruption, and hosts Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser were yapping--in between Final Four forecasts and spring training rants--about Phelps 's historic performance at the world swimming championships. Where did he belong on the sporting landscape? Was he elevating his niche sport to watercooler status? "Awesome," said Phelps , a sports-TV junkie. "I watch these guys all the time, and now they're talking about swimming."

Phelps left no doubt that he deserved the attention: For one majestic week he redefined swimming standards with the greatest performance in history. He won seven gold medals and broke five world records, most by enormous margins. Only the U.S. team's unlikely disqualification in the heats of the medley relay (after butterflyer Ian Crocker left the blocks .04 of a second too soon) kept Phelps from an eighth gold, which would have surpassed the record set by Mark Spitz at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

In swimming parlance Phelps wasn't so much raising a bar as he was "beating the line," the superimposed red string that travels along TV screens and arena scoreboards indicating a world-record pace during races. Crowd noise crescendos when swimmers' fingertips are anywhere near the moving line. "Michael is even beating the line with his bloody feet!" Australian veteran Grant Hackett marveled last week. "He is just superhuman. We won't see anything like this again."

Phelps won five individual events in Melbourne , one more than Spitz did in 1972. At 21 he has earned the most gold medals in world-championship history (17), adding to the eight Olympic medals (six of them gold) that he took home from Athens in 2004. In a sport that often measures progress in hundredths of seconds, Phelps lowered his own world records in the 200-meter butterfly by a gaudy 1.62 seconds (to 1:52.09--nearly nine seconds faster than Spitz's gold medal time in '72), in the 200 individual medley by .86 of a second (1:54.98) and in the 400 IM by 2.02 seconds (4:06.22). He swam 1.34 seconds faster than his personal best to pare .20 off Olympic great Ian Thorpe 's world mark in the 200 free. "I felt like an age-group swimmer," Phelps said in wonder after the 200 fly. "The last time I dropped my times by whole seconds, I was 12."

In the 100-fly final on Saturday, the 6'4" Phelps outtouched world-record holder Crocker at the wall in a near replay of the 2004 Olympic finish. "It's hard to slay the dragon," Crocker said afterward. Phelps , who strained muscles in his back in late 2004 and postponed plans to incorporate weight training into his workouts, credits the relentless routine of squats and plyometrics that he started last April for helping his legs maintain propulsion in the back halves of races in Melbourne . "It makes a huge difference being able to have more strength and speed," says Phelps . "It used to kill at the end of races. Now it doesn't hurt as much underwater."

Over the last year and a half Phelps has also matured, enrolling in classes at Michigan and becoming his own toughest critic. Last October after oversleeping and arriving late to a practice, he had to face his coach of nine years, Bob Bowman . Bowman was ready to read the riot act until he realized he wasn't nearly as angry at Phelps as Phelps was at himself. The inseparable, headstrong pair has gone six months without a quarrel, which is surely another record.

There was more than one lane to success at the worlds, however. In contrast to Phelps 's calculated regimen, Laure Manaudou , the 20-year-old French phenom who won the 200- and 400-meter freestyles, lives and swims by feel. After breaking the world record in the 200 free, she held up her left palm, on which she had written love as a message to her boyfriend, Italian swimmer Luca Marin. She has been on the cover of the French weekly magazine Paris Match three times and has used nontraining days to drop in on the Cannes Film Festival, Formula One races or Marin's home in Italy . "I swim better when I'm in love," she said last week. (Manaudou also wore her feelings on her sleeve at the Athens Olympics, where she donned a T-shirt with her boyfriend's name scribbled on it. Alas, that was two beaux before Marin.)

The worlds stamped Manaudou as a potential star at next year's Beijing Games along with several others, including fun-loving Floridian Ryan Lochte (who ended compatriot Aaron Peirsol's seven-year winning streak in the 200 back), Australia 's Libby Lenton (five gold medals, the most of any woman in Melbourne ) and, of course, Phelps , who in August 2008 will try to win Olympic gold in all his events. For this week's exhibition dual meet in Sydney between the U.S. and Australian teams, Lenton had a not-unreasonable suggestion: "To be fair, let's have three teams," she said. " America , Australia and Michael Phelps ."