The oldest man on the U.S. swim team came through with the race of the lifetime just when his team needed it most. Lezak appeared destined for second as they made the last flip, needing to make up half a body length, and even with 25 meters to go all seemed lost, including Phelps' shot at break Mark Spitz's record of seven golds in 1972.
"When I flipped at the 50," Lezak said, "I really thought, 'There's no way.' And then I changed and I said, 'You know what, that is ridiculous. This is the Olympics and I'm here for the United States of America. I don't care how bad it hurts.' In like five seconds I was thinking all these things. I just got a supercharge and took it from there."
The wily veteran hugged the lane rope like a NASCAR driver drafting down the backstretch at Daytona, and seemed to be carried along in Bernard's massive wake. Closer. Closer. Closer. Finally, on the very last stroke, Lezak lunged for the wall.
His hand got there first, eight-hundredths of a second ahead of Bernard's. The Americans won in 3 minutes, 8.24 seconds, shattering the mark their "B" team set the previous evening of 3:12.23.
Phelps bowed up, thrust both fists in the air and screamed "Woooooo!" Garrett Weber-Gale flexed his muscles. Lezak leaped out of the water when he saw the result. Then they all gathered for a group hug with the fourth member of the team, Cullen Jones.
"I was watching Michael Phelps after the anchor leg touched," said President Bush, who stopped by the Water Cube for the second day in a row on his way out of town. "The whole thing is genuine. That's the good thing about the Olympics."
Then there's the other side of the Olympics. Bernard clung to the end of the pool, his head hanging. He was the last one to climb from the water.
"Alain is wounded," said Claude Fauquet, France's team director. "But I don't think that Alain lost the race. It's Lezak who won it."
Indeed. Lezak went down and back in an astonishing 46.06 seconds, the fastest relay leg in history though it doesn't count as an official record.
"Jason is the most phenomenal closer I've ever seen in my life," Jones said. "He's been able to get his hand on the wall from behind, from ahead, it doesn't matter."
Just how fast was it? Eamon Sullivan of Australia also set a world record by swimming the leadoff leg in 47.24 — shattering Bernard's individual mark of 47.50 in the 100 free. While the top five teams all went under the previous world record, two of them didn't even get a medal. France settled for silver and Australia claimed the bronze. Italy and Sweden didn't get anything.
Lezak stressed that he wasn't thinking about Phelps' bid to win eight golds when he set off on the anchor leg.
"Michael knows we didn't do this for him," Lezak said. "He was just a part of it and we were a part of it. Whether he wins eight gold medals or not, it wasn't going to be our responsibility for that to happen."
While all the focus has been on eight — the number of wins Phelps needs at these games to break Spitz's mark from the Munich Olympics — he's on the verge of tying another very special mark.
Spitz, Carl Lewis, Paavo Nurmi and Larysa Latynina share the record for the most gold medals over an Olympic career, each with nine, but they are merely keeping a spot warm for Phelps before he heads on by.
After winning six golds in Athens, he's two-for-two in Beijing. With six events left, he surely will eclipse the career record at these games and put it totally out of reach for anyone in the foreseeable future.
"Whatever the outcome is going to be," said his mother, Debbie Phelps, "it will make the history books."
