LONDON – Michael Phelps sat in the warm-down pool after the final race of his Olympic career and thanked his coach, Bob Bowman, for making him the greatest swimmer of all time."That's not fair," Bowman said.
"What's not fair about it?" Phelps said.
"You were in the pool."
"Yeah, my tears can hide behind my goggles. Your tears are streaming down your face."
The steely-eyed competitor behind the goggles didn't used to allow outsiders peeks into his inner sanctum. But Phelps recalled that conversation for a room full of news reporters on the night he ended an interstellar Olympic career in the way history demanded, with gold.
Phelps won his fourth gold medal of the London Games, and 18th of his life, in the 4x100-meter medley relay Saturday — in the last race of the night, of the meet, of his life.
Matt Grevers put the Americans in front on the backstroke.Brendan Hansen relinquished the lead to Japan's Kosuke Kitajima on the breaststroke. Phelps got it back on the butterfly, and freestyler Nathan Adrian brought it home. Perfect. One last time, Phelps surged to the front in Olympic water.
The Americans embraced in a quick group hug. British fans applauded. They know a thing or two about history, and of kings.
Fans lingered. Competitors did, too. Some of them lined up, as if in a receiving line, to shake his hand.
"It's kind of cool," Phelps said. "That's the best part of the Olympics. You have people from all over the world who come together to compete in the best sporting event ever."
What will he write in his journal about this night? No clue, he said at first. Then he thought maybe this: I did it.
"I've been able to do things no one else has ever done," Phelps said. "And that's what I've always wanted to do."
No one else has ever done this: 22 medals, 18 gold, two silver, two bronze.
When Phelps lost on the opening night of the Olympic meet, coming fourth in the 400 individual medley, he looked shaky. Was it really going to end like this? No worries — from there he won four gold and two silver, more medals than anyone else in the meet.
His rival, Ryan Lochte, told one and all before the Games that this was his time. Phelps told one and all only that he wanted toppings for the ice cream sundae of his career.
"I was able to top off the sundae tonight," Phelps said. "I was able to put the cherry on top and all the sprinkles."
Phelps, 27, also told one and all for months that he would never race competitively again. Not everyone believes him.
As Phelps rose to leave one news conference on his way to another, a question was asked of his relay teammates: Do they believe he's done?
"Yes, yes," Phelps called out as he walked away, and warm laughter washed the room. But the question remained.
"You've heard it from him," Hansen said. "We'll see him — I'm sure he's going to be around — but not in the pool, not where we like him best."
Mark Spitz, for one, thinks Phelps will be back. Reached by phone, Spitz told USA TODAY Sports to expect Phelps in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
"I think that Michael really and truly believes that this is the end," said Spitz, who won seven swimming gold medals in the 1972 Munich Games, perfection trumped by Phelps' eight in the 2008 Beijing Games. "But I believe that will be short lived."
Spitz thinks Phelps will sit out for two years or so, get the itch to compete once more and dive back in. Spitz theorizes that Phelps could enter the 100 butterfly and the medley relay in Rio in 2016 and come home with two more gold.
"That's what I think is going to happen," Spitz said. "And, you know, his mom has said she'd like him to go. And you always want to do what your mom wants."
Are-you-sure questions were asked of Phelps more than once at his news conferences. Each time, he waved off any notion of a return.
"I'm ready to be done," he said. "I'm very satisfied, very happy with it. I'm a lot more relaxed now than I thought I would be at this time."
Besides, as he's said for months, he promised himself he would not be swimming when he's 30, "no offense to people who are 30 in swimming. I've been able to do everything I've wanted. If you can say that about your career, there's no need to move forward: Time for other things."
Bowman, who knows Phelps' competitive nature best, said he thinks Phelps is really done. "I think," Bowman said, "we've had a great end to a great run."
That great end was the medley relay. When Phelps gathered his team before it, he said he told them only this: "We all want to win. Let's just go out and do it."
They did. Americans have never lost the medley relay, though Australia won it in 1980, when the USA boycotted the Moscow Games.
Phelps has been saying all week that the watchword to his eight-day last hurrah is fun. Of Saturday's Olympic-sized going-away party, he turned it into a superlative. "This is one of the funnest ways to do it," he said, "in a relay like this."
He is all about superlatives now. Most medals. Most golds. Most decorated. Most likely to be hailed greatest Olympian of all time.
Does he think he's that? Phelps didn't quite answer. That's when he told his story about talking to Bowman in the warm-down pool. Phelps said they talked about how Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time and how now Phelps is history's greatest swimmer. Then: Thanks, and tears.
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