Photographs: Adam Pretty/Getty Images
Michael Phelps is poised to scale the final mountain he needs to reach the peak of Olympic immortality when the fourth day of the Olympic swimming competition takes place on Tuesday.
-London Olympics 2012 - Full coverage
After a slow start to the London Games, Phelps finally gets his chance to reclaim the spotlight and claim one of the few records that he has not yet captured.
Phelps is the overwhelming favourite
Photographs: Clive Rose / Getty Images
The American is the overwhelming favourite to win Tuesday's 200 metres butterfly final, an event he has dominated for the past decade.
If he does win, he will become the first male swimmer to win gold in the same individual event at three successive Olympics, a feat that has proved beyond all the great male swimmers who have come before him.
Phelps can equal Latynina's tally of 18 Olympic medals
Photographs: Sean Kilpatrick / AP Photo
If he wins any medal, he will equal Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina's record tally of 18 Olympic medals but probably not for long.
Within an hour of the butterfly final, Phelps should be diving back in the pool for the 4x200 freestyle relay, a race the US are heavily favoured to win that would give him the outright record.
Tuesday's programme also features the heats and semi-finals of the men's 100 freestyle, one of the blue-riband events of the swimming competition.
Comment
article