If you didn’t get a chance to see it, I know you had to have heard about Michael Phelps’s razor-thin victory in the 100-meter butterfly on Saturday morning (Friday night, U.S. time).

Actually, it was closer than razor-thin. Phelps kept his drive for eight gold medals—which was completed Sunday morning (Saturday night, U.S. time)—alive by 0.01 ... that’s one one-hundredth of a second.

I was watching it when it happened, and, I have to say: I wasn’t sure Phelps pulled it off. They showed the replay, and I just couldn’t tell. It seemed impossible that he could have beaten Serbia’s Milorad Cavic to the wall; he was behind, even with less than a meter to go.

But he did. And this incredible sequence of pictures from an underwater camera at the wall convinced even the Serbian delegation, which withdrew its protest of Phelps’s win after seeing the tape.

Go ahead. Click the link. You have to see these pictures to believe it.

Athletes and their teams have to have a bit of fortune to go along with their skill if they are going to become dynasties. It’s an old saying in sport that you’d rather be lucky than good. 

Michael Phelps, a dynasty in himself, is both.

Phelps now has 14 medals and can unquestionably be called the best swimmer in history. But now that the swimming competition is over, the debate has become whether Phelps—who won every event he entered and set or was a part of setting world records in seven of the those eight events—is the greatest Olympian ever. Click here to read a great article about this debate, which won’t likely be settled ...

... At least until 2012.