237 WEEKS

All the focus right now is on Michael Phelps for his total Olympics record of 14 Olympics medals (12 gold, two bronze. There could be more from him. He is already the all-time greatest number of Olympics gold medal winner. Can somebody stop this immortal superhuman being? He's just amazing!

Well, apart from that, the 237 weeks of this post title refers to Roger Federer's strong hold of World No.1 is coming to an end. About 3 months back, a Serbian friend, Vesna, came to my office for about 2 months research internship. Since the era of Steffi Graf - Martina Hingis, I had really 99% hardly watch tennis anymore except on some occasions when I switched over to the sports channel and saw some tennis matches. It was during the French Open when I saw Vaidisova and Jankovic (it is natural that guys will be interested to watch women's tennis). She kept on declaring her love for the sport and talking non-stop about her fellow countryman, Novak Djokovic. I was introduced to Roger Federer (whom she is a fan too as well), Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. The World No.1,2 and 3 are all extremely good tennis players.

I also found out that Federer has been World No.1 for over 4 years. I thought this was incredible because during the era of Michael Chang, Stefan Edberg, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Tim Henman, Boris Becker, Marat Safin, Todd Martin, Goran Ivanisevic and Jim Courier, we just have nobody controlling World No.1 for that long consecutively. Oh ok, perhaps Sampras only. I started to support Nadal because I watch the La Liga and I think he is cool. From then onwards, nothing seems to be stopping Nadal. He has been climbing steadily to wrestle the world No.1 ranking from Federer. Federer is losing confidence and things have all gone wrong for him.

18 August 2008 will be the day Rafael Nadal officially becomes world No.1. Let the King of Clay take his position and hopefully he will reign supreme for more years at the top than what Federer could do.