{"id":19896,"date":"2008-12-24T11:48:49","date_gmt":"2008-12-24T16:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/uncategorized\/2008\/12\/michael-phelps-named-the-associated-press-top-sports-story-ap-male-athlete-of-2008\/"},"modified":"2014-07-27T22:35:18","modified_gmt":"2014-07-28T05:35:18","slug":"michael-phelps-named-the-associated-press-top-sports-story-ap-male-athlete-of-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/michael-phelps-named-the-associated-press-top-sports-story-ap-male-athlete-of-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Phelps Named The Associated Press Top Sports Story, AP Male Athlete of 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BALTIMORE, Maryland, December 24.  YESTERDAY, members of <i>The Associated Press<\/i> named Michael Phelps its Male Athlete of the Year as well as Phelps&#39; record haul of eight gold medals at the Beijing Games as its top sports story of 2008.<\/p>\n<p>According to <i>The Associated Press<\/i>, &quot;By taking down Mark Spitz&#39;s Holy Grail of records with eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, Phelps also was a runaway selection for AP&#39;s male athlete of the year. Only Olympic sprinting sensation Usain Bolt (five votes) and New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning (four) got more than a single vote. Phelps was named on 172 ballots, becoming just the third swimmer to claim the award.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The previous swimmers who won the award were Don Schollander in 1964 and Spitz in 1972.  All three swimmers who have earned <i>The Associated Press<\/i> top honor also were honored by <i>Swimming World Magazine<\/i> as its Male World Swimmer of the Year.  Phelps also became the first swimmer to win <i>Sports Illustrated&#39;s<\/i> Sportsman of the Year.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Some of the accomplishments have sunk in, but some haven&#39;t,&quot; Phelps told <i>The Associated Press<\/i>. &quot;I&#39;ve been on the road a lot and haven&#39;t had time to myself to really sit there and think about what really did happen this summer and this whole year.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><a href=http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5gaR_Epn6U6pDIC_v8S6N1H0hloBwD95867H00 target=_blank>Full text of <i>The Associated Press<\/i> article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BALTIMORE, Maryland, December 24. YESTERDAY, members of The Associated Press named Michael Phelps its Male Athlete of the Year as well as Phelps&#39; record haul of eight gold medals at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-usa","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>Michael Phelps Named The Associated Press Top Sports Story, AP Male Athlete of 2008 - Swimming World<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/michael-phelps-named-the-associated-press-top-sports-story-ap-male-athlete-of-2008\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Michael Phelps Named The Associated Press Top Sports Story, AP Male Athlete of 2008\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"BALTIMORE, Maryland, December 24. 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