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By now, you've probably had your fill of the fish that walks like a man. Michael Phelps. Big guy. Long arms. Sleeps in an aquarium at night.

Over nine days, the 23-year-old American swam 17 times, won eight gold medals and set seven world records. His race results were announced during baseball games at Yankee Stadium in New York. Fans at an NFL pre-season game at Ravens Stadium in his hometown of Baltimore, Md., stayed after the game to watch one of his swims on the jumbo scoreboard.

And that's just the first wave of the Phelps phenomena.

Today, he will be featured in a new advertising campaign for Visa. He'll soon be highlighted by Speedo, which agreed to pay him $1 million (U.S.) if he tied Mark Spitz's 36-year-old record of winning seven medals at a single Olympics.

Phelps equaled that mark then bettered it by helping the U.S. win the men's 4x100-metre medley relay Sunday. That's guaranteed to put his mug on more magazines, newspapers and broadcasts than a Britney Spears-Paris Hilton car crash.

"Will we ever see this again?" coach Bob Bowman was asked of his swimmer's extraordinary performance. "Probably not in my lifetime. It's all been pretty special. There wasn't once where we said, 'It's not going the way we want it.'"

Phelps was so fortunate that even the potentially disastrous moments turned in his favour. In the 4x100-metre freestyle relay, Frenchman Alain Bernard made a tactical error that allowed Jason Lezak of the U.S. to beat him to the wall to keep the Phelps' medal pursuit alive.

Then in the 200-metre butterfly, Phelps' goggles malfunctioned and filled with water. He swam much of the race blind, counting his strokes so he knew when to turn. On Saturday, it looked to the naked eye that Phelps had been out-touched at the wall in the 100-metre butterfly; the time clock said otherwise.

Phelps let loose emotionally.

"He's the Tiger Woods of swimming," a dozen or so swimmers said comparing the unsinkable Mr. Phelps to the world's greatest golfer.

But was Phelps too good for these Games? Was his domination, like Woods's mastery of the PGA, a benefit to swimming or a blip?

Phelps worked a pair of news conferences Sunday. His first began with an Olympic media spokesperson informing us we were all "lucky to witness the birth of a legend." His second was held in super-sized conference room at the main media centre, where he and Bowman sat at a table almost as long as a 25-metre pool.

During both sessions, Phelps went out of his way to state his new goal: growing the sport of swimming.

"For me, it's the continuation of my goal to raise swimming to as high as I can get it in the U.S.," Phelps said when asked what he does for an encore. "I don't want this sport to be an every-four-year sport. It's great at the Olympics but there's really not as much exposure for us that I'd like."

While Phelps will be seen repeatedly in the weeks ahead, swimming is likely to resume its background position. Phelps tried to carve out a niche for his sport by organizing and participating in Swim With the Stars, a month-long tour that hit 12 cities and included several of his American teammates, such as Ian Crocker and Lenny Krayzelburg.

The tour sold-out and Phelps wants to keep his Olympic momentum rolling.

"This is the way swimming will continue to be," he said of the meet's highly-competitive nature. "It's important to get the sport to as high as it can be."

Keeping it on the radar screen will be tough enough once the NFL regular season and college football seasons begin and North American sports fans brace for baseball's post-season. Still, those in the sport believe that if one man can take swimming to new places, earn it more exposure and corporate support, it's undoubtedly Phelps given what he did here and his plans to stick around another four years for the 2012 London Olympics.

"The race format at this meet (with the finals moved to the morning so NBC could show Phelps in North American prime time) made it even harder for him to do what he did," said Swimming Canada CEO Pierre Lafontaine. "It was amazing history."

Bowman, the coach, agreed noting the magnitude and importance of Phelps' accomplishments.

"I told Michael coming in, 'If you want to win all your races you have to do the work, be prepared and get some breaks, and we did. A lot of things came together," said Bowman. "It was something special."

As for his most immediate assignment, Phelps the pitchman and product said he had something less grand in mind.

"It's time to take a little vacation," he insisted. "Just sitting, not moving."