KEY POINTS:
The most successful Olympian of all time is trying damn hard to ignore the hubbub. He has just left the Water Cube swimming centre in Beijing after staking his place in history and now he is sitting on a bus waiting for a ride back to the athletes'
village.
The scene is the perfect illustration of how Michael Phelps lives his life in a goldfish bowl. As he screws his baseball cap backwards and twists his earphones in to listen to hip-hop on his iPod, he pretends he has not seen the fans and media jostling at the windows.
On both sides of the bus, a crowd of people 20-deep are screaming "Michael!" and snapping pictures. One of them, Zeng Qinwen has travelled 27 hours on a train to see him. She queued before dawn to buy a ticket for the session when Phelps claimed his historic 10th gold medal (surpassing Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, Paavo Nurmi and Larysa Latynina who all have nine) and then waited in the sticky 30C heat to click a picture of her hero. "I love him very much," she said. "I watched him make history."
Phelps is already moving on. As the bus leaves, he is thinking about food and his evening swim session. What will he eat? "It's been pretty much pizza and pasta every lunch and dinner for the last four or five days so I'll stick to the same routine," he said as he left the centre. "After that it's McDonald's."
Just normal stuff, apparently. And that's the thing about Phelps: he sure looks human, but then he dives into the water ...
At the Beijing Olympics, he has not only won five gold medals, he has smashed the fields and the clock, scooping up world records in each event. Not even a technical malfunction can stop him.
Even when his goggles slipped off in the 200m butterfly, he left the field - including New Zealand's courageous Moss Burmester - in his wake.
Despite the problems, Phelps had the mental fortitude to ignore it and carry on. "I knew there was nothing I could do. I could just swim, that's all."
His opponents are dumb-founded. "He is just a normal person, but maybe from a different planet," said Russia's Alexander Sukhorukov in the aftermath of the Phelps-led demolition of the 4 x 200m freestyle relay race. British swimmer Simon Burnett had another theory: "He is not from another planet; he is from the future. His father made him and made a time machine."
The records, however, do not support those facts. Phelps, 23, grew up in Baltimore where he struggled at school until he was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He forged a tight relationship with his mother Debbie, a school principal. He has been virtually estranged from his father since his parents divorced when he was nine.
And in the past four years, following his six-gold sweep at Athens, he has proved he is susceptible to moments of fallibility and frailty like anyone. Not long after the 2004 Games, on a rare night out, he was pulled over in his pimped-up Land Rover after cruising through a stop sign. Officers breath-tested him and he was charged with drink-driving, for which he was sentenced to 18-months probation.
In October last year, he stumbled and fell at home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and cracked his scaphoid bone in his wrist. The injury devastated him and left him terrified he would not recover for Beijing.
But, with the help of coach Bob Bowman, he pulled through. "Bob was on to it, finding exercises for me to stay in shape," said Phelps.
"I haven't had the best year or years and probably didn't make some good decisions, but I've learned from every one of them. I think it's part of growing up. I remember saying at [last month's US team Olympic] trials to Bob: 'I think in the circumstances we've had this past year, it hasn't been a bad year so far'."
And after this week, you'd have to agree.
His success is borne of a deeply-ingrained competitive streak, Tiger Woods-like mind control, and relentless training. In Beijing, even whenever he has been behind coming into the last lap, he has kicked off the final wall and emerged ahead of the field. He revealed that this is something he has practised for, a tool he has honed for exactly that situation.
"We spend a lot of time on kicking every single day," he said. "When I do a set I try to incorporate underwater dolphin kicks so I can go to it whenever I need to."
It's that kind of dedication which has won him the plaudits of the world - and ribbing from his friends.
At a press conference on Wednesday, he pulled out his Blackberry and read out a text he had received from an old high school friend immediately before the Burmester race.
"Dude, it's ridiculous how many times a day I have to see your ugly face," the text read.
"Keep up the work for the rest of the week. It's time to be the best ever."
