RIO DE JANEIRO — This story is part of a special section commemorating Michael Phelps that will be available in Sunday's edition of The Sun.
In the hours immediately after Michael Phelps won his 23rd, and perhaps final, Olympic gold medal, several interviewers asked him to pick a favorite.
This was like asking a parent to choose a favorite child. Phelps loves every one of the Olympic finals he won (and why wouldn't he?), but he loves them in different ways.
Still, he made it clear the 200 butterfly final meant the most to him during the 2016 Olympics. The 200 fly was the bedrock on which he built his Olympic career, and he'd never gotten over losing his signature race to South African Chad le Clos in 2012.
Phelps threw every bit of his talent and competitive will into the final here, and he waved his hands defiantly after victory was his, daring the world to come at him with anything it had left.
This was the moment when Phelps knew, in his bones, that every moment of pain and doubt he'd endured to come back to swimming had been worth it. The tears in his eyes during the national anthem said as much.
But it was not my favorite moment from his seven days of swimming in Rio.
I've watched Phelps carefully for 2½ years, since he ended his retirement at the Arena Grand Prix in Mesa, Ariz., in April 2014. I've studied his old races, observed him at banquets and press conferences and tried to understand what motivates him. I've seen him furious with himself after a shoddy race and lighter than air after an hour splashing around with Baltimore school kids.
For those who've followed Phelps over that span — which included the lowest lows of his life— it was easy to grasp why these games hit deep for him and those closest to him. He had rebuilt himself in hopes of creating a more-satisfying ending to an already remarkable career. And he actually pulled it off.
Against that backdrop, I'll give you three moments that struck me as I watched Phelps' final (he says) Olympic chapter.
The first came on his first night of competition — Aug. 7.
We did not know for certain Phelps would swim the 4x100-meter freestyle relay until an hour before racing began that night. The relay was always part of his programs during his prime, but he honestly had not been a great freestyler through most of his comeback. He had not swum 100 freestyle at Olympic trials to earn a spot on the U.S. relay team.
Phelps is a different creature during relays than during his individual races — louder, more demonstrative, more apt to smile.
And the crowd in the Olympic Aquatics Stadium fed off seeing him emerge onto the pool deck for the first time.
He was up second, and the U.S. trailed when his teammate, Caeleb Dressel, hit the wall. But Phelps changed the relay with one of those unique moments that seem more available to him than anyone else. In this case it was a turn at 50 meters, one his longtime coach, Bob Bowman, called the best he's ever done.
Phelps would touch in 47.12 seconds, the fastest 100-meter relay leg of his career, and the U.S. would never trail again in a race it was not expected to win.
It turned out he'd found his freestyle stroke during pre-Olympic training camps in San Antonio and Atlanta. One of the underrated aspects of Phelps' career is the gift he and Bowman have for tinkering in the weeks before a big meet. Phelps convinced coaches and teammates he belonged in the relay with a scorching time trial a week before the Olympics started.
And then he showed the world.
The Olympic Aquatics Stadium shook with energy. Gone was any sense his week might be a letdown.
The second moment was the 200-meter individual medley final on Aug. 11.
By then, Phelps already had three gold medals, including one for his coveted win in the 200 fly. But this race fell in the middle of his busiest day at the games, with a 100-butterfly semifinal scheduled 30 minutes after it ended.
All we'd talked about for 24 hours was Phelps' 12-year rivalry with Ryan Lochte and the remarkably close races that always ensued when they met in the 200 IM. They'd stayed neck and neck in their semifinal and that was the presumed narrative for the final as well.
Instead, Phelps demolished the field by two seconds, looking like he'd dropped straight in from Beijing in 2008. Lochte didn't medal in the 200 IM.
Phelps' emotions were not as fierce as after the 200 fly, but his mastery was more total.
The third moment came the next night, Aug. 12.
Phelps swam his last individual final, in the 100 fly, and for the first time, the physical toll of the week seemed to catch up with him. He fired off the block sluggishly and was sixth at the 50-meter turn.
Phelps has made many furious charges and pulled out many miraculous finishes in 100-fly finals, and he attempted another. But this time, he had to fight just to finish in a three-way tie for silver with le Clos and another old rival, Laszlo Cseh. He had no hope of catching 21-year-old Joseph Schooling.
Phelps likely would have felt disgusted with his swim at previous Olympics. He went slower than he had the previous summer and slower than he had at trials.
Instead, he seemed relieved, almost giddy.
All week, he'd encountered a generation of younger swimmers who were inspired by his feats in 2004 and 2008. Schooling, for example, had posed for a picture with Phelps in his native Singapore, just before the Beijing Games.
Instead of feeling annoyed by this, the 31-year-old Phelps — a vicious competitor most of his life — cherished it. He sounded absolutely genuine during the post-race press conference when he said he looked forward to seeing how far Schooling could drop his time in future years.
The rage to dominate had gone out of him.
Phelps won another gold, his 23rd (as he said, crazy), on the final night of swimming. He and Bowman stuck close together in the moments before that race, feeling the powerful, largely unspoken bond they'd built over 20 years.
Every swimmer in the building celebrated him that night, knowing they'd never share a pool with him again.
But I'll remember the light in Phelps' face after his one loss of the 2016 Games. It was the surest sign that this time, he really does intend to move on.