OMAHA — The nightly light shows, so elaborate that fans experience the sensation of being trapped in a giant crystal raindrop chandelier, are part of Michael Phelps’s legacy.
With a record 28 Olympic medals, including 23 golds, Phelps transformed the U.S. Olympic swimming trials from a quadrennial family reunion into a spectacle that he described Monday as “semi-overwhelming.”
Phelps, 35, was a fixture at these trials for so long that seven of the eight women’s finalists in the 100-meter butterfly on Monday night weren’t born the last time he attended the meet as a spectator, in 1996.