Phelps Equals Spitz in One Respect

Michael Phelps has matched one of Mark Spitz’s accomplishments. Now, it’s on to the Olympics.

Phelps didn’t find out until after he’d won the Sullivan Award as the nation’s top amateur athlete in 2003 on Tuesday night that Spitz won the award too -- 32 years earlier.

“He won it before he had his big success at the Olympics, so maybe it’s a sign,” Phelps said with a laugh. “I don’t know. You can always hope.”

Phelps, the 19-year-old American swimmer who will try to equal Spitz’s seven gold medals in one Olympics at the Athens Games in August, beat LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Diana Taurasi, who recently led Connecticut to its third straight NCAA women’s basketball championship.

Last year’s winner, Sarah Hughes, received a standing ovation when she was introduced at the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan.

Phelps, from Baltimore, is the first swimmer to win the award since Janet Evans in 1989. Spitz won the 1971 award, and then won seven events at the 1972 Munich Games.

“It’s definitely harder to do now than when Spitz did it,” said Phelps, who did not win a medal at the Sydney Games in 2000. “We have prelims, semis and finals for everything 200 [meters] and below, so it’s going to be a challenge.”

The other finalists for the award were short-track speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno and 57-year-old masters track-and-field athlete Philippa Raschker, an accountant from Marietta, Ga.

The Sullivan has been presented by the Amateur Athletic Union to the nation’s best amateur athlete since Bobby Jones won it in 1930.