(August 4,2008)

Who is the most talked about star before the Olympics? The American research institution Dow Jones has checked the Olympic items from July 15th to 28th, of 6000 major TV and print media all over the world and ranked the top ten most mentioned names. Surprisingly, the flying fish in swimming pool Michael Phelps is not ranked first!

Jamaica’s flier Powell

According to the investigation, the name most mentioned by the media is Jamaica’s flier Asafa Powell, who held the men’s 100 meter record for three years until May 31th 2008 when he was beaten my fellow country man Usain Bolt. His American rival Tyson Gay, who recently ran a super fast 9.68s 100m at the wind assisted American Olympic trials, ranked second. Phelps ,holder of 6 gold medals and 2 silver medals from the Athens Olympics, didn’t even beat his Australian rival Grant Hackett in the ranks, although he was aiming to achieve a miracle of winning 8 gold medals.

Hackett has become Phelps nightmare even before the competition begins. Hackett’s senior Ian “torpedo” Thorpe made a comment about Phelps in January this year that, it would be hard for Phelps to realize his dream of winning 8 gold medals. As a response, Phelps pinned the paper with this comment inside his locker in the training center at the University of Michigan. He says it will gives him more motivation to achieve his lofty goal when someone like Thorpe comments about it. “I will look at the report everyday and when people say that I can’t, I will work even harder to do the training.” It seems that Phelps will have to add another report onto his locker.