Cheerful ending: Phelps wins 8th medal — from the stands

ATHENS — Two swimmers won medals last night while cheering in the stands.

By now, everyone knows the story of Michael Phelps, who offered his spot in the 400 medley relay to teammate Ian Crocker, perhaps putting Phelps' record splurge in Athens in jeopardy.

Not to worry. Crocker swam a personal-best leg in a world-record relay last night as swimming came to an end, meaning that Phelps got his sixth gold of the Games and eighth overall, by virtue of having swum a leg in a qualifying race.

"I felt like it was an opportunity that it's hard to say 'thank you' for, because it's such a big opportunity," Crocker said. "I just wanted to do it justice."

With Crocker's help, the 19-year-old Phelps tied Soviet gymnast Aleksandr Dityatin's record for the most medals earned in a single Olympics.

In the crowd yelling for the U.S. team with Phelps was 22-year-old Tara Kirk, the Bremerton High grad and Stanford student who had set her sights on a medal in the 100-meter breaststroke, the same event childhood swimming-pool companion Megan Quann had dominated at the Sydney Games.

But her Olympics, like those of a lot of people you won't see at night on NBC, got away from her. Kirk struggled in the last 50 meters of the 100 breaststroke last week, finishing sixth.

Worse, her time in that race, 1 minute, 7.59 seconds, was slower than teammate Amanda Beard, who went on to win the 200-meter breaststroke here. That meant Beard, not Kirk, would swim the breaststroke leg of Kirk's only other possible race, the medley relay.

That's exactly how it played out, with Beard, Natalie Coughlin, Jenny Thompson and Kara Lynn Joyce swimming the night final, which was dominated by Australia.

Kirk, because she helped qualify the team in the position it took to the silver, gets the medal as well, albeit not on a medal stand with the world looking on. This is an odd, little-known (at least to the public) practice at the Olympics, where athletes in early heats for swim and track relays get the same medal earned by their teammates in the finals.

But it's still a thrill for Kirk.

"It's really weird, because you're not in the race, but it is your race," she said. "I was really excited at how fast Amanda went. She swam faster (1:06.32) than my split in the morning. So obviously it was a correct decision to put her on the relay."

Beard was an easy choice, as was Coughlin for the opening backstroke and Kara Lynn Joyce on the closing freestyle leg. Not so clear was the butterfly leg, swam by retiring veteran Jenny Thompson.

Thompson, in spite of winning two relay medals here, upping her career total to 12 (10 on relays) and vaulting her to first place, male or female, on the all-time U.S. Olympic medalists list, never came close to her old form in the Athens pool. And before last night's medley relay, poolside speculation was that the 31-year-old fading star might be replaced by a youngster with the oomph to push the United States past the likes of Australia's Leisel Jones, Petria Thomas and Jodie Henry.

A time trial was held to see if any of the kids had enough steam to swim faster than Thompson. Apparently, none did.

Which is too bad, because one candidate was Dana Kirk, Tara's sister and an up-and-coming butterfly swimmer.

The United States fielded the expected team — and the Aussies gave them an expected thrashing, swimming 3:57.32 and destroying the Americans' previous world record of 3:58.30.

Beard's leg bested Jones, Australia's top breaststroker, to widen a lead established out of the gate by the blazing Coughlin, whose 59.68-second first leg set an Olympic record. But nobody in this field could touch Quann's time of four years ago, which says something about the Puyallup swimmer's dominating power at the time. Quann, now 20, failed to make the squad this year.

The relay loss was a tough one for the Americans, who had owned this event, sans three second-place finishes to now highly suspect East German squads, for decades. Their male counterparts — Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen, Crocker and Jason Lezak — made up for it, breaking their own world mark in the same relay to put a golden exclamation point on the Athens swim meet, which saw U.S. swimmers nab 26 medals, 18 by men, eight by women.

Take away Phelps' eight medals, though, and it was far from a banner Olympics for the United States, which won 33 swim medals at Sydney.

Tara Kirk said she'll look to the future, which includes graduate studies this fall at Stanford, more swim training, and, perhaps, another chance to do it again, four years from this night, at a pool in Beijing.

"I am thinking about it, in sort of a vague sense," she said. "But I still have a lot of stuff to do between now and then. Think about how much I've changed in the last four years. I've come a long way. I hope I'll come that far in my swimming in the next four."

Her Olympic experience, she said, has been grand — and seems grander now with a medal in hand.

"I think with time and distance, it'll probably change a little bit in my head," she said. "I've been concentrating on getting the job done and thinking, this is just a meet."

But it wasn't, she admitted.

"I think right now, well, I'm not satisfied. I'm happy with being at the Olympics, but also excited to go back (home), do it all again, and do it better next time."

She'll be back in Bremerton Sept. 2, she said, and will be in town for about a week. She's not sure where or when that silver medal will arrive. But she thinks she'll get it in the mail.

She's not planning her own little front-porch medal ceremony.

"No, probably not," she said, grinning. "I'll probably be excited about it, show my friends, and send it back home to my parents. My parents are so proud. I'm proud of my medal, but I think they might be a little more excited, if that's possible."

Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com. The San Jose Mercury contributed to this article.