NBC's positioning/marketing of Olympian Michael Phelps going after the gold is beginning to have the makings of a personality cult.

The Today show's host Matt Lauer asked swimmer Ryan Lochte, who had won a gold medal in one competition but lost to Phelps in another competition, how he thought people would have responded if he'd had "derailed" Phelps, bested him in a competition.


Lochte responded he hope people would have been happy if he’d won. After all, the Olympics are about competition, right? No, marketing it seems. Later, the host asked Lochte about his thoughts about, once again, the Phelpian pursuit.

In Olympics 2008, there are no other games being played; the world eyes are directed on Phelps, whose physique, in another segment, was described as having a "genetic" superiority.

NBC has vested so much time and money in hyping Michael Phelps it seems sacrilegious if another athlete were to win. Lauer's question seemed to infer that there would have been a lynching party waiting for Lochte back home had he won.

If so, Lochte would have not been remembered as an athlete who performed to the best of his ability but as the man who'd derailed the Olympian Chosen One.