Michael Phelps swam to immortality on Wednesday as he won his 11th Olympic gold medal scoring thumping victories in the 200m butterfly event and the 4X200m freestyle relay event. The latter victory made ESPN label him as the “most decorated Olympian” of all time. With his last victory, he is now one gold medal short of the six that he won in Athens four years ago.  Phelps also managed to enter the league of the greatest Olympians of all time as he went past legends like Carl Lewis, Paavo Nurmi and Mark Splitz in terms of individual Olympic gold medals won. All of them had nine while Phelps boasts of 11 with still three tiles to be captured in the swimming division.

 
He created a world record by finishing the butterfly event in 1min 52.03 seconds sending the American camp into a big frenzy. The freestyle relay was also a big success for the American swimmers as they finished on 6min 08.45 seconds.

 
He is touted to win all eight at water cube and if he manages to accomplish this feat, then he will go down in the annals of Olympic history to go past the record of 7 gold medals won in a single Olympics event, a record which was created in the 1972 Olympics in Munich by fellow American Splitz.  

 
US President George Bush was seen cheering throughout the event for all the American competitors and also spotted in high spirits were Microsoft creator Bill Gates with other dignitaries.