It was force of habit. He didn’t have a race that day, or even a scheduled training session with his coach of 16 years, Bob Bowman. For two decades, the 27-year-old Baltimorean was up at dawn for his first of two daily swims, clicking off the millions of laps of training that earned him the title of nothing less than the greatest Olympian of all time. With an unprecedented 22 Olympic medals, 18 of them gold, he is now the most decorated Olympian ever,

“There will be no more staring at the black line [at the bottom of the pool] for four hours every day,” he said that morning in London. “This is the first day of my retirement. The first day of my new life.”

MORE: After Ending Career With a Gold, Is Phelps the Greatest Olympian of All Time?

And just what will he do with the rest of his life? Travel and golf, he told the reporters gathered to document the first day of the rest of his life.

But who is he kidding? The pool and Phelps will be forever linked, forged in an unbreakable bond as interlocked as the five Olympic rings. Like the whiff of chlorine that trails every water baby, he won’t be able to shed the sport of swimming so easily.

Nor does he want to. While always cagey about disclosing his personal goals during his competitive career, Phelps has said that one legacy he hopes to leave behind is a sport that is stronger, bigger and higher profile than when he entered it. “I want to grow the sport of swimming,” is his refrain. His agent, Peter Carlisle of Octagon, says that desire was born early, at his first meeting with the then-15 year old Phelps, who was shopping for representation. Ensconced in a lawyer’s office, Carlisle and his team were talking to Phelps’ team as if the teen wasn’t in the room. During the lunch break, Carlisle prodded the boy to speak up. Nervous, Phelps dropped his plate of food but had his answer: he wanted to see swimming on SportsCenter.

“The problem was, at that time, Michael had this abstract potential, but he didn’t have a platform,” says Carlisle. “He was the youngest swimmer to break a world record but if a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? The general public had no idea about Michael or about swimming. That’s where we were in 2002.”

MORE: Built for Speed

Fast forward a decade, and swimming does pop up on SportsCenter, world championships earn coverage by ESPN, and at the past two Olympic Games, it occupied the place of honor during NBC’s prime time coverage of events. There’s no question that Phelps and his journey, first to surpass Mark Spitz’s 36-year old record of most (seven) Olympic golds in a single Games, and then to best Russian gymnast Larissa Latynina’s 48-year old record of most medals earned by an Olympian, were a big part of that. (And that his brief falls from grace, including a DUI arrest and a three-month suspension from USA Swimming in 2009 after a photo of him inhaling from a marijuana pipe surfaced, only made his story more human — and newsworthy.)  In Athens in 2004, in Beijing in 2008 and in London in 2012, the big question in the aquatic center and in the minds of the billion of viewers who tuned in to watch swimming worldwide was: ‘could Phelps do it?,’ would Phelps do it?’

“There is no question that Michael brings instant rock star status to any swim meet,” says Evan Morgenstein, president and CEO of PMG Sports, an agency that represents Olympic athletes. Agrees Carlisle: “Michael’s journey was unique enough to draw in and keep an audience. He kept the general public interested, and helped increase the relevance of swimming for them.”

MORE: How Phelps Made Swimming History

Since 2001, USA Swimming membership has increased by 25%, and more of those athletes are sticking with the sport (70% in 2010 compared to 65% in 2001). Clearly not all of that interest can be directly attributed to Phelps, but after Beijing, the organization saw its highest increase in year-round memberships in 23 years. At the last swim of his career in London, fans poured into the Aquatic Center from around the globe.

“He is a legend; it’s unbelievable what he has achieved,” Victor Kolar, a gym teacher from the Czech Republic who came to watch Phelps with his wife and two daughters marveled. “We want to be past of his last celebration.” For his daughters, aged 12 and 7, Kolar hopes Phelps will serve as a role model. “He showed great determination to succeed, and it’s good to learn from him, learn how to win, and learn how to be resilient,” he said.

Still, as challenging as his remarkable feats in the pool were, Phelps faces an even bigger obstacle now that he won’t be diving into races any more. Granted, in some ways his dream of building up the sport of swimming becomes easier, as he sheds his rigorous training schedule and becomes freer to become an ambassador for the sport. (An offhand comment that he has always wanted to dive with great whites elicited a flood of offers from dive outfits and even the Discovery Channel, which plans to document a trip to South Africa in which he cage dives to get up close and personal with the beasts to air during, natch, Shark Week.)

But will people still watch swimmers splashing anonymously in a pool covered in goggles and a cap if Phelps is not among them? “Everybody in the swim industry, whether a coach, a parent to a swimmer or a swimmer, is asking the same thing,” says Morgenstein, who represents gymnast Nastia Liukin and swimmer Dara Torres. “They know that their future in some way, shape or form is dependent on how popular the sport of swimming is. If the sport stays popular because Michael Phelps stays involved with it, then he has created a legacy beyond his accomplishments.”

MORE: The World’s Greatest Athlete Wins Gold in London. And so Does Usain Bolt. Is Decathlete Ashton Eaton Really Better than Bolt?

And that legacy goes both ways. “You can’t just take Michael as a totally independent, disconnected character and create a brand around him as though he doesn’t depend on the sport, or the sport doesn’t depend on him,” says Carlisle. “He needs the platform of swimming; he needs the Olympics and the Olympic partners. Otherwise the moment he is done competing, he’s not relevant any more.”

And the reality is that swimming, and swimmers, jostle in a crowded US sports market that rewards sports with well-established, high profile professional leagues. Swimming comes around once every four years, and while there are no shortage of swim programs at the youth and college level, it lacks a professional circuit of events that can sustain a swimmer who wants to turn his laps in the pool into a living. Sure Phelps was able to break through and get his story covered on ESPN (and on the cover of TIME), and become a regular spokesperson for sponsors like Subway (even in non-Olympic years), and, more recently, Louis Vuitton. But it literally took an historic feat of Olympic proportions for him to earn that status.

When I first spoke to Phelps before the Athens Games in 2004, he was frustrated by the corporate world’s lack of interest in swimming. “Look at the new Sprite commercial, it’s LeBron [James],” he said. “You don’t see a swimmer doing a Sprite commercial.” And the sad truth is, you still don’t. “Swimming is always going to be an Olympic sport,” says Morgenstein. But he acknowledges that Phelps has a unique opportunity to spin the sport’s cycle beyond its usual four-year revolution. “Millions of kids swim during the summer,” he says. “It would seem that there is enough momentum associated with Michael that he can motivate kids above and beyond his swim centers.”

Whether that is in the form of a professional swimming league that allows Olympic-eligible athletes to earn winnings depending on their point total in a series of meets, or whether it means creating a youth league modeled after Little League that gives promising swimmers more support throughout their career, will be up to Phelps. His stature in the sport is such that he might be only one to seed such a change. “Michael and I are putting together very unique ideas for some events that are media and spectator friendly that haven’t been done before,” says Bowman, in a hint of where we might see Phelps next.

VIDEO: Michael Phelps: How Boxing Makes You a Better Swimmer

For now, however, he says Phelps is focusing on expanding his swim schools, which are part of the Michael Phelps Foundation, begun in 2008 with the $1 million bonus check he received from Speedo for breaking Spitz’s record. Phelps’ im program, which is taught at the schools, begins with water safety for children who have never been in a pool and extends to stroke training. So far, it’s part of 28 Boys and Girls Clubs in the U.S. and Phelps hopes to expand the program to all 200 of the Clubs with a pool and provide transportation for youngsters without access to pools so they can participate as well. Growing the sport will mean nurturing its grass roots, and not simply lending his presence when it’s convenient, a commitment that Phelps seems to have already made.

“I want to take swimming to a new level,” he said before leaving London. “It hasn’t reached the peak I want it to reach. That’s tough for swimming in the U.S. because we have so many sports, so many professional sports in the spotlight. Hopefully we can catch up and be on the same level. I’ve been able to see the sport change so much in the last four years, it’s shocking.”

It will take more of that kind of shock, and the constant reminders of the awe that Phelps has inspired during his career, to draw both new swimmers and corporate sponsors into the sport. “We will certainly miss the thrill of watching him compete,” says Bowman, “but he will still have a platform, and more people involved in swimming can only help to grow the sport.” And maybe one day put a swimmer in a Sprite commercial.

Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Coming into the final, the U.S. in its bracket had outshot France by an average of 18.7 points, and despite the vociferous French fans chanting “allez, allez les Bleus,” by halftime the U.S. women had a 12-point lead, thanks to outscoring the French on fast breaks and turnovers. With Kobe Bryant in attendance, the Americans, led by three-time Olympic champion Sue Bird, stretched their lead to 36 points in the second half, finding the net to eventually clinch the gold at 86-50.

And now that the U.S. squad, all of whom play for the WNBA, have had their golden moment in London, they’re headed to the States to pick up where they left off, with the second half of their truncated season. And they’re going to be faced with the age-old question that was raised before the league was formed in 1997, and every season it has played since, and that will probably dog it for every season for the forseeable future. Where is the love back home?

(MORE: Dwight Howard is Traded to the Lakers!! And Oh Yeah, the Olympics)

Yes, viewership of WNBA games is up. According to ESPN, the league’s 2011 season drew 5% more viewers than the previous year, the third straight year it climbed; there have also been more ticket holders at games over the past five years. And yes, more girls are citing players like Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes and Diana Taurasi as role models and more girls are shooting hoops because of them. But the reality is that despite training and playing and honing their skills just as male hoopsters do, women players simply don’t command as much attention or revenue. The Indianapolis Star recently ran a side-by-side tally of the NBA’s Kevin Garnett’s earnings against those of the WNBA’s Tamika Catchings of the Indiana Fever, and a member of the USA women’s basketball squad. The numbers were telling. Both players are league MVPs, and Garnett owns one Olympic gold while Catchings now owns three. But Garnett earns $21 million a year in salary, plus another $10 million in endorsements, according to Sports Illustrated. And Catchings? The Fever pays her the league maximum of $105,500 a season, and with endorsements, her career earnings total $3 million to $4 million.

And she’s one of the better paid WNBA athletes. On average, NBA players earn more than women’s league players by a ratio of 200 to 1.

(MORE: The Olympics’ Wonder Women)

It’s true that the WNBA is only 15 years old, compared to the NBA’s 63-year history in the sport, so that certainly has something to do with the salary gap; it takes time for a league to get established and build a fan base and attract sponsorships. But it’s been 40 years since Title IX, which mandates that any federally funded sport programs provide for boys and girls equally. The law has certainly filled the pipeline for a couple of generations of basketball players, as high school programs and scholarships for college players have encouraged more girls to play.

But that hasn’t translated into a robust league yet, as far as sponsorships and endorsements are concerned; in the U.S., the WNBA has struggled to find a place in the crowded landscape of predominantly male sports that rule the best broadcast slots and soak up commercial opportunities. It’s only been in recent years that ESPN has begun broadcasting all of the WNBA finals games, and it’s been six years since a major network has shown the games.

Some of that has to do with the audience itself; getting women to watch women’s sports is a challenge. In a recent study of why women watch sports, most admitted athletic contests weren’t must-see TV for them. They were more likely to catch coverage while doing other things, or by coincidence, but rarely by making time in their day to watch. The women also said they wouldn’t follow a team or player throughout an entire season, primarily because of the time commitment that would require. Men, on the other hand, track teams and players not only throughout a season but over years, devoting time on weekends or weeknights to following their favorites. So despite the fact that more women may be participating in sports, that boost hasn’t been translated into more women watching sports, and that’s the key to establishing a base for commercial and revenue opportunities. “The public narrative that as more women play sports, more women are going to watch sports, is simply not happening,” one of the study authors told time.com. “And one reason for that is the role that women have in the family unit. Their role as domestic caretakers trumps their role as fan.”

(PHOTOS: Olympic Highlights in Photographs)

Comparing the men’s and women’s games may also put the women at a disadvantage. “Men’s basketball is all dunks, and it’s flashier, and women’s basketball is more about finesse,” says Jenna Stigliano, 29, of Connecticut who came to watch the gold medal final in London. “The slower pace may turn people off.”

Or perhaps we’re just focusing on the wrong thing. While the sponsorships are slow to come in, the league is making an impact perhaps where it counts most – in school gyms. As of last year, seventeen former WNBA players are head coaches for college teams, and dozens more are employed as coaching assistants. That may be where the league can have its greatest influence in growing both the sport and inspiring girls to become hoopsters. And that may end up expanding the league itself, as the bolus of younger players pushes into the professional ranks and start to create a supply that seeds a demand.

There are signs that may be happening, not just in the U.S. but around the world, as women’s basketball gains more exposure on the global stage. “Teams are getting better every single year,” says Catchings. “Every time we go out, we have that target on our back; everybody is trying to play their best game and beat us.”

Which is why gold medals can’t hurt, especially for sponsorships. Last year, the WNBA signed a league-wide contract with Boost Mobile and have partnered with American Express and InterContinental Hotels.

(MORE: Olympic Women’s Boxing Has Its First Champions, and a Generation of Girls Have New Role Models)

“I hope we can use this as a boost going back to the second half of our season,” says Candace Parker, forward for the Los Angeles Sparks, who led the U.S. team in points against France. “In terms of attention and ways to promote the league, this is the best time after winning our fifth consecutive gold medal.”

Plus, says Stigliano’s husband, Todd, 31, who coaches boys’ high school basketball, it’s all about perspective. “It would be good if women’s basketball got as much attention as men’s basketball, but women’s professional sports in the U.S. is light years ahead of the rest of the world. We’ve talked to people since we’ve been in London about women’s soccer and they just laugh, because they don’t have a league like we do.” U.S. women have leagues of their own; now it’s about growing them into something more lasting.

But the roster for the title fights of the day — Nicola, Katie, Sofya and Claressa — didn’t read like your typical fight night of pugilists. Because these particular warriors were the first athletes to contest for gold medals in Olympic women’s boxing, the event that has made its debut in London.

The matchups were a boxing fan’s dream: in the flyweight division, Great Britain’s Nicola Adams, the native daughter and a clear fan favorite, faced off against China’s Cancan Ren, the current world champion who beat Adams just three months ago. Adams dominated from the start, however, and even managed to knock Ren off her feet in the second round, fueled by the partisan crowd and the Cinderella story that brought her from Leeds to the pinnacle of Olympic success. “I thought it was going to be a bit closer,” she says of the 16-7 score. “But I was so determined, I wasn’t going to let her win. My mind was set on winning today.

(MORE: Ireland’s Best Hope for Gold: Boxer Katie Taylor Punches Her Way Into Women’s Semifinal)

And not only did she earn gold #24 for Team GB, she made history as the first Olympic women’s boxing champion, a feat whose significance she is well aware of. “What I want to see [is] more girls getting into boxing,” she says. “I would love to see when I retire, girls coming up and wanting to achieve what I’ve done. That’s an amazing feeling for me.”

History was made again barely 10 minutes after Adams’s last bell rang, when Ireland’s Katie Taylor, fighting for her country’s first gold by a female athlete at these Games, outboxed Sofya Ochigava of Russia in the regulation four rounds of two minutes each by 10 to 8. Trailing Ochigava after the second round, Taylor fought for every point, coming back to edge Ochigava for the gold in the light weight division. Taylor, who is coached by her father, Peter, says she wasn’t overly concerned at the halfway point. “I knew I was one point down in the second round, but it’s only one point at the end of the day,” she says. “Dad said before to stay calm, composed and keep to the game plan, so I stayed relaxed, and wanted to stick to the game plan.” In her three bouts in London, Taylor’s best round is her third, so “We knew she was going to have a good third round,” says Peter. “Maybe we should start her contests in the third round.”

Just minutes later, teenager Claressa Shields of the US came out swinging for a 19-12 win over another Russian, Nadezda Torlopova in the middleweight bout. Just the day before, Shields’s teammate Marlen Esparza of Houston, Tex. won the first Olympic medal in women’s boxing, a bronze, along with India’s Mery Kom Hmangte, in the fly weight division.

(MORE: Million Rupee Baby: India’s Mary Kom Could Be the Olympics’ Most Unlikely Champion)

So how justified was all the hand wringing over whether women belong in boxing — whether spectators would come to watch women go at each other, whether seeing women in the ring would send the wrong message to young girls about gender or body image, or the role that women have in sports?

All of that seemed quaint on Thursday, as the capacity crowd cheered the pioneering female athletes with more vigor than they have at other venues – the decibel level at the women’s matches possibly tops the meter of any of the Olympic events contested so far. And as for seeing women duke it out in the ring? “It’s more interesting than watching men [boxers],” says Cormac Hayes, 12, who hails from Taylor’s home town of Bray County Wicklow and came to watch her with his family.

And that says a lot. Seeing athletes like Taylor break gender barriers, says Cormac’s mother, Suzanne, “gives more and more women confidence to be able to think they can get out there and dream. It gives them a bigger focus that they can do sports like men can do, and just as well,” she says.

(MORE: After Ending Career With a Gold, Is Phelps the Greatest Olympian of All Time?)

Even more important, it gives young girls role models that give them a taste of the breadth of opportunity available to them. “When I first got into boxing, Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard were my greats,” says Adams. “If girls come into boxing because of what I did, then I think I’ve achieved everything.”

Adams says she remembers watching boxing movies with her father, who got her started in the sport, and seeing Ali in Rumble in the Jungle, and Leonard’s “wicked left hook” inspired her to imitate them. But if the Olympic stage gives women’s boxing more exposure, and inspires more women to take it up, then athletes like Adams, Taylor and Shields may soon replace male icons in the sport. “It’s a huge responsibility,” says Taylor of the enormous support and expectation that the Irish people have placed on her. “Hopefully I am a great role model, and hopefully some girls are watching, and are inspired to be an Olympic champion, or inspired to be a medalist, and I can show them this is what they have to look forward to.”

Soft-spoken and almost embarrassed to have the spotlight shone on her, Taylor is also showing a generation of girls that female athletes, and especially those in sports like boxing, don’t have to conform to gender stereotypes, and above all, can still be female. “She is sending a positive message,” says Alison Collins, a teacher from Cork. “There are so many pressures on women nowadays in magazines and TV to look perfect, be skinny and made up to the last. She’s breaking that barrier.”

(PHOTOS: Olympic Beauty Statements: Bold, Beautiful and Downright Bizarre)

In her hometown of Bray, certainly, those girls are watching, and dreaming the same dreams Taylor conjured over 17 years. Businesses shut down early, children were allowed to break from their classes, and the entire town stopped for nearly 15 minutes during Taylor’s bout.

The Excel arena was awash with Irish flags and green shirts, as confident fans bought up what seemed like the entire allotment of tickets in anticipation of seeing Taylor win the gold medal bout.

That’s what inspiration is about, and that’s what the first Olympic medals in boxing are about, whether it’s in Ireland or in the U.S. Shields, who grew up in Flint, Mich., often without enough money for three meals a day, says, “When I used to go running, I’d see all the crackheads, these drug addicts. I just didn’t want to be like them, not at all. I wanted to be where my sister and my little brother and my mom would never have to go without a meal again.”

If the crowd reaction was any indication, women’s boxing may have a healthy following at the Olympic Games, and with three trailblazing champions like these, the sport may have also won some important fans among the younger generation. Asked if it was odd to see women fighting in the ring, Cormac’s brother Corey, 10, didn’t take long in answering at all: “No.”

MORE: Wonder Women

So beach volley baller Kerri Walsh thought she’d do her part to promote the Olympic spirit – by getting pink eye. “I woke up this morning looking like Rocky Balboa,” she said a week before today’s gold medal final.

Seeing through all that pink also had her and partner Misty May-Treanor seeing red. After mowing down their opponents in the last two Olympics in straight sets – that’s 16 matches and 32 sets – they lost their first set on Olympic sand that day. And while they eventually prevailed over Austrian sisters Doris and Stefanie Schwaiger, the pair weren’t happy. “We want to crush everybody. We don’t care where they’re from,” Walsh said of their mentality coming into the final.

And crush them they did, for a record-setting third consecutive Olympic gold, even if their opponents were teammates. First-time Olympians April Ross and Jennifer Kessy of the US had the misfortune of facing May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings in the final, and while Ross-Kessy had beaten them before, they couldn’t repeat in London. “We gave it our all,” says Kessy, who grew up playing both May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings in southern California as teens. “Kerri and Misty played unbelievably. They were tough to stop, and didn’t make very many mistakes at all.” Ross agreed. “We always look for little holes to get in there, and score a point here and there, and they gave us zero openings,” she says of the 21:16, 21:16 score.

MORE: Lolo Jones Finishes Fourth in the Olympics: Did She Deserve to Be Heard?

At 6’2”, Walsh Jennings is a human wall at the net, one of the most effective blockers in the sport. In London, she deflected 22 points to earn a spot in the gold medal match, and a strong defense was the key to defending their title. “It was just a matter of playing patient, disciplined defense against them,” says May-Treanor of their win. “The key was to break their serve.”

And that they did, with 10 more service attempts than Kessy-Ross and more successful attack attempts, thanks to Walsh’s hallmark spikes.

But as dominant as they were, getting to the final at the makeshift beach on Horse Guard’s Parade was hardly a given for May-Treanor and Walsh. After 2008, Walsh had two children (who were in the crowd to watch their mother earn her third gold medal), and May-Treanor tried her hand at dancing, with the stars, and injured her Achilles. “We took two years apart, and Misty and I both went through a lot of challenges,” says Walsh. “Physically and emotionally, we grew up in those two years. And when we got back together, we wanted to do it right. We wanted to understand that what we have is special, and we wanted to cherish that, from the first day when we had lunch and talked about getting back together, to today.”

The partnership wasn’t going to be the same after all those personal changes; it couldn’t be. “They said they wanted to come together for their third Olympics, but their platform had completely changed,” Michael Gervais, a sports psychologist in Los Angeles whom Walsh Jennings had been seeing and who counseled the pair throughout their preparation for London, tells TIME.com. “Early on, they primarily saw themselves as athletes. But now, in their third Olympics, they are much more dynamic as people – they have families and different relationships. Their value sets have changed.”

MORE: After Ending Career With a Gold, Is Phelps the Greatest Olympian of All Time?

May-Treanor says London was about more than earning their history-making third gold. “The first two medals were more about volleyball,” she says. “The friendship we had was there, but it was all volley ball, volley ball. This was so much more about friendship, togetherness and the journey, and volley ball was just a small part of it.”

Together since 2001, the pair went into the Beijing Games with a year-long streak of 101 wins. Both began as indoor volleyball players; May-Treanor’s first partner, her father, an Olympic volley ball player who competed in 1968, was also Walsh’s first coach and the two played against each other in high school.

They didn’t actually meet until Walsh, who idolized May-Treanor, then playing on the professional beach volleyball tour, asked May-Treanor to autograph her towel. It wasn’t long until the duo were playing together and Walsh was sleeping over at her new partner’s house as they trained to become the most dominant women’s pair in the sport.

MORE: History-Making High: How U.S. Gymnast Gabrielle Douglas Became the Olympic All-Around Champion

Since Beijing, however, with two years off, the pair haven’t been as dominant, losing the world champions earlier this year to Brazil. That was unfamiliar territory for them, and with all the other changes in their lives, the pair wanted to make sure they were both mentally and physically prepared for the challenges they would face in London, so they consulted with Gervais. “One of the things they understood is, ‘Let’s do the work ahead of time, so when we find ourselves in a challenging situation, we have a sense of how to move through it gracefully and powerfully.’” That means opening up to each other about not just their performance on the sand, but about their expectations and how they would achieve them, he says. “We just got them to share honestly what it is they wanted out of this journey together,” says Gervais. “One was to win gold, and the second was to connect in a deeper way through their families and through each other.”

Which is why every Olympic celebration for the duo have included an impromptu reach into the stands for hugs and congratulations from family members. This time, Walsh’s entourage included her two sons, aged 2 and 3.

It was a bittersweet celebration, however, since the history-making match is May-Treanor’s last; she plans to retire after London. “[This medal] is way different,” says Walsh, who is hoping to continue playing with another partner. “It’s way, way more special. The journey in the past two years that we shared together changed my life; I know it sounds really dramatic, and cheesy, but it has. Our competitive journey together is done, and that’s a big deal. It crushes me a little bit. It makes it really hard, really bittersweet, but I’m really proud that we went out the way we went out.”

Raisman, the last woman to compete on beam, couldn’t hide her disappointment when her score flashed on the board: 14.966. That put her fourth, behind two Chinese and a Romanian gymnast, but her coach, Mihai Brestyan, knew something was wrong when the rest of the numbers went up. Raisman’s routine was ranked 6.2 for difficulty — too far off the possible 6.6 that he had choreographed. He quickly filled out an inquiry form, which coaches must do if they want to appeal a decision before the next gymnast performs, or, since Raisman was last, before the competition is over and the gymnasts leave the floor. Within minutes, the inquiry was reviewed by a new set of judges, who looked back at the video and agreed that Raisman had been robbed of 0.1 for connecting her turns.

But that still wasn’t enough to put her on the podium. It pulled her into a tie with third place finisher Catalina Ponor of Romania, who is a gold medalist in the event from the 2004 Games. So the judges went to a tiebreaker: and it was Raisman’s execution score, which rewards gymnasts for the precision and technical skill they exhibit during their routines, that broke the deadlock. The judges scored her performance with 8.766 points out of 10, and Ponor with 8.466.

MORE: History-Making High: How US Gymnast Gabrielle Douglas Became the Olympic All-Around Champion

It must have been karma of some sort, because just five days before, Raisman was on the other end of a tie-breaker during the all-around competition, in which her execution score for three of the four events was lower than that of Aliya Mustafina of Russia, who edged her out for bronze. “She finally got what she deserves,” says Brestyan of Raisman’s first individual Olympic medal.

The boost certainly put an extra bounce in Raisman’s performance on floor, less than two hours later. Still on a high from the medal ceremony for her bronze, Raisman added a layout to her first tumbling pass that she had taken out during the all-around competition, out of fear she would step out of bounds and lose an automatic 0.1 points. This time, she performed the extra skill, and with the more difficult routine, posted a 15.6 that the other seven gymnasts couldn’t surpass and was good enough for gold. Teammate Jordyn Wieber, who missed out on qualifying for the all-around event after stepping out of bounds on her floor exercise, did it again, was penalized 0.1 points and finished in seventh place.

“It felt like redemption,” says Raisman of her re-scored beam routine. “I went out into the next event with a really good feeling. I wanted to win a medal in an individual event, so once I achieved that goal I felt like I could just go out there and enjoy myself.”

Her teammates, McKayla Maroney, Kyla Ross, Gabrielle Douglas and Wieber, cheered her double medal day from the stands, which brought the U.S. women’s gymnastics squad’s medal total to five. It’s one shy of the 2004 haul, and short of the eight won by the 2008 Beijing team, but Martha Karolyi, the national team coordinator, will take it. “I am very pleased with this young generation,” she says. “They showed lots of power, and medals-wise I was very pleased because the U.S. won team gold and all-around gold, the two biggest medals that any single country can wish for, and that was the first time in history for U.S. gymnastics. We are very proud of that.”

MORE: U.S. Women Gymnasts Win First Team Gold Since 1996

Earning that team gold, however, clearly wiped the Fierce Five, as they are calling themselves. The toll was clear on Gabrielle Douglas, the all-around champion in London, who had to perform on all four apparatus – beam, bars, vault and floor – three times over five days (for qualification, team finals and the all-around competition). In the finals for the bars on Monday, she didn’t have the strength to reverse a swing and ended up in last place. During her beam routine Tuesday, her foot slipped and she nearly fell off, but managed to hang on and finish in seventh. “I just rushed myself and missed my footing,” she says. “I’m a little disappointed in my performance because I could have done a little bit better but mentally and physically I was kind of tired. But overall I’ve done very good. I’m going home with two Olympic gold medals so I’m very happy.”

Her coach Liang Chow, says Games fatigue is clearly a factor in Douglas’ performance over the past two days, especially since the event finals stretched over three days and not two, as in previous Olympics. “She is a very young athlete, and it’s hard for her to focus, and after she took gold for the team, and gold in the all-around, it was very hard to bring back her focus to the level we were,” he says. “But I cannot be happier with her preparation and the results and accomplishments we got out of this Olympic Games.”

MORE: Team China Dominates in Men’s Gymnastics as Japan Takes Silver

Douglas’ teammate Maroney also faltered in her event final on Sunday; the world champion on that event, Maroney launched a textbook perfect vault to help the U.S. win team gold, but uncharacteristically fell on her second attempt during the event final a week later, which pushed her to second place. Wieber, too, hasn’t been at her best, and admitted that she has been nursing a possible stress fracture in her ankle since the squad began preparing for London at a training camp in July. “It didn’t bother me much,” she says of her ankle, which hasn’t been officially diagnosed yet but will require her to wear a boot for the rest of her time in London. “I’m not making any excuses, I’m just saying that we couldn’t train like we normally train, because we had to water down numbers, protect her leg a lot more, and sometimes that has an impact,” says her coach John Geddert.

With so many events requiring the gymnasts to be at their peak over such a long period of time, it’s inevitable that athletes will have good and bad days, and that not every routine will go off as planned. “It’s not about winning or losing, it’s just about putting your all into it,” says Douglas. “You don’t lose, you just technically have a bad day, or make mistakes. We are definitely not losers, we’re like superheroes.” And fierce ones at that.

After riding a golden high that propelled her to two Olympic gold medals, one in the women’s gymnastics team event and another in the individual all-around competition, Gabrielle Douglas Monday fell to last in the finals for the uneven bars. She finished eighth in a field of eight, with the lowest score she’s received on that apparatus during the entire Games.

Clearly waning after pushing through three complete rounds of competition since last Sunday, Douglas didn’t have the strength to reverse direction on the bars and stalled on a handstand. She tried to cover up with a pirouette but the judges, and the crowd, knew something was wrong. “I’m a little disappointed in myself; I could have fought harder on that and pulled a little harder,” she says. “Toward the end of the Olympics, you get mentally and physically tired, and you just get drained. I tried to fight through as much as I could.”

PHOTOS: Gabrielle Douglas’s Rise to Olympic Triumph

Although bars is her strongest event, Douglas wasn’t a favorite for a medal since the field featured the highest scoring female gymnast of the entire women’s competition in London – a 16.1 from Russia’s Aliya Mustafina, as well as the defending Olympic champion, He Kexin of China, Mustafina’s teammate Victoria Komova, who is the world champion on bars, and Britain’s Elizabeth Tweddle, whose routine was one of two with the highest difficulty level.

Douglas’ routine had the lowest start value, at 6.3, meaning it wasn’t as intricate or as challenging as those of the other gymnasts. And while she makes up points with the height she achieves on her release moves, even she acknowledged that it would have been hard to get on the podium. “I wasn’t doubting myself going into bar finals, but even if I hit a good, solid routine, it still wasn’t enough to medal because Beth Tweddle and Mustafina and the Chinese girls all have these big scores,” she says. “Going in, I have this average kind of low start value. It was definitely amazing talent; Beth Tweddle with her insane connections, Mustafina with her lines and preciseness.”

Mustafina’s trademark dismount, a tucked one and a half turns with a twist, ups her difficulty score, and when she nails the landing, as she did both during the all-around final and the event final, she easily breaks 16 points.

MORE: History-Making High: How US Gymnast Gabrielle Douglas Became the Olympic All-Around Champion

At a start value of 7.0, however, it’s not the most challenging program. That belongs to China’s defending Olympic champion on the event, He Kexin, whose 7.1 helped her to silver. Mustafina’s clean lines and crisp execution on handstands and release moves earned her a 9.133 out of 10 from the judges for execution; He garnered 8.833.

Just 0.017 points behind He, Great Britain’s Tweddle won the country’s first individual medal in women’s gymnastics (they earned bronze in 1928 in the team event). A lightning fast bar worker, she dazzled the appreciative crowd with consecutive release moves that she ticked off with military precision, earning her an execution score higher than He’s. Competing at her third and final Games, Tweddle was happy to end her career on such a high. “Everyone knows I wanted this one medal to be able to finish my career happy,” she says. “This was the one thing what was missing.”

For the US team, the strain of putting their all into competing in two strenuous rounds of competition for the team final is beginning to show: on Sunday, McKayla Maroney, the world champion on vault, uncharacteristically had a fall on one of her two attempts and earned the lowest score of her season, a 14.3 that cost her the gold she was expected to win in London.

And in Douglas’s case, being in the spotlight as the first African-American to win the individual all-around, as well as the first US gymnast to win gold medals in both that event and the team competition, means her personal life will be exposed as well. TMZ reported that in January, her mother, Natalie Hawkins, who is divorcing her husband and has been raising her four children on her own, filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy with a debt of nearly $80,000. The bills include student loans, credit car and cell phone debts, which she is paying off in monthly installments. “My dad had left us, and he wasn’t really in the picture any more,” Douglas says of her father, Staff Sgt. Timothy Douglas who served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. “My mom had to pay all these bills, and my dad didn’t really pay the child support, he cut it short. It was definitely hard on her part.”

For her part, Hawkins told reporters in London, “It’s my story, it’s part of me. I’m not even embarrassed about it…It shows that even though I didn’t like to have to do it, I’m glad there was something there for me to be able to protect my home.”

Hawkins applied for and received military scholarships to continue funding Douglas’ gymnastics training in Iowa, where she moved to work with Liang Chow, coach of Olympian Shawn Johnson. She has been living with a host family in West Des Moines since 2010.

MORE: US Women Gymnasts Win First Team Gold Since 1996

After her performance in London, her appeal to sponsors should help her family’s financial situation, but for now, it’s back to training for her final event — the finals in beam. “I am kind of disappointed I didn’t try harder on the bars routine, but it’s definitely motivation for beam,” she says.

“What’s not fair?” asked Phelps.

“You were in the pool.”

Phelps knew exactly what he meant. “Yeah, my tears were happening behind my goggles, and yours are streaming down your face,” he told his coach.

Phelps and Bowman put an emotional end to a historic career in the Aquatics Center in Olympic Park on Saturday, one that tops off at 22 career medals and 18 golds.

And how would he sum up his remarkable run? “I did it,” he says.

MORE: U.S’s Golden Day in the Pool: Phelps Wins 17th Gold

It’ll have to do for now, until the emotions and the impact of his achievement has time to settle in. Phelps has been adamant about the fact that he doesn’t want to swim when he is 30, and by the next Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero in 2016, he’ll be 31. Driven by his own goals, which he doesn’t like to make public, in Beijing Phelps became the first Olympic athlete to earn eight gold medals in a single Games. This time, he wanted to make history again by collecting more Olympic hardware than any athlete ever.

“I’ve been able to do everything I wanted,” he says. “Through the ups and downs, through my career, I’ve still been able to do everything I wanted to accomplish. I’ve been able to do things nobody else has ever done, and that’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

To be the first is a lofty goal, and at Phelps’ level, it’s the only one that makes sense. In the last race of his career, with his mother, Debbie, two sisters Hilary and Whitney and his niece Taylor in the stands, Phelps did what he does best: he helped the U.S. men win their seventh consecutive gold in the 4x100m medley relay, traditionally the last swimming event of the Games. With the US trailing by 0.55 seconds to Japan after the breast stroke leg, Phelps dove in for the last 100m of his competitive career with an impressive butterfly leg that pulled the Americans back on top with a 0.47 lead that they never gave up.

MORE: Swimming Stunner: Phelps Falls to Lochte, Fails to Medal

Brendan Hansen, a three-time Olympian who swam the breast stroke leg of the same relay in 2004 and 2008, was matched up against Japan’s Kosuke Kitajima, who edged him out of both 100m and 200m breast stroke gold medals at the past two Olympic Games. “It was fun to swim next to him, and I’m glad the Japanese were right next to us,” says Hansen of their adjacent lane assignments. “It’s been a fun ride, and I hope to take a picture with him to put a cap on the rivalry we’ve had, and how much fun we had.”

Going out on top was also important to Phelps, who finished this Games with a fourth place finish in the 400m individual medley, but four golds and two silver medals to top the medal count for any swimmer in London. Presented with a special trophy from the international swimming federation, FINA, for his record-breaking achievement, he says “It’s tough to put into words right now. I finished my career how I wanted to, and I always said that I don’t care what anybody else says—if I can say that about my career, that’s all that matters.”

Swimmers are already starting to miss him and what he brings to the pool, but it’s not hard to see the legacy he leaves behind for both the younger athletes from the U.S. as well as around the world. When asked about whether his gold in the 1500m freestyle will make him the greatest athlete in China, Yang Sun said “I’m not yet Michael Phelps. If you talk about the greatest athlete, I think it’s Michael Phelps.”

And it’s not just the male swimmers who will be missing his presence. In a stunning world record swim, the women’s 4x100m medley relay of Missy Franklin, Rebecca Soni, Dana Vollmer and Allison Schmitt, who trains with Phelps at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club in Maryland, won the US’s first gold in the event since the 2000 Games in Sydney. Franklin, 17, who has been called the female Phelps for her unprecedented seven-event swim program in London (the first for a female swimmer), credits Phelps with inspiring her through Olympic Trials and at the Games. “I don’t think [his] shoes will ever be filled; his footsteps are huge. But hopefully I can make little paths right next to his,” she says.

The US men’s team finished the Games one medal short (16) of its haul in Beijing in 2008 (Phelps, after all, missed a medal in the 400m individual medley), while the women matched its 2008 performance with 14 medals, but with four of the eight world records set by both male and female swimmers in London. “As the days have gotten longer, we’ve gotten better each session,” says Vollmer, who set a world record in the 100m butterfly on the second night of the Games. “It’s incredible to see the young ones really step up, and not care that it’s the Olympic Games, and how many people are watching them, and perform for our country. I’m in awe of what USA Swimming can offer for many, many years to come.” And that’s the kind of legacy that only the greatest Olympian of all time can leave.

“I’m not going to say that I was slower [than in Beijing], or I wasn’t having a better turn at the finish. I’m not even going to say that. I’m just happy the last swim was a win. That’s all I really wanted coming into the night. This one was a bigger margin of victory than the last two combined,” he says, referring to his last two close calls at the Olympics in this event. “So you can smile, and be happy.” Phelps is the first swimmer to claim gold in the 100m butterfly in three consecutive Olympics (it wasn’t his first three-peat; that happened when Phelps beat teammate Ryan Lochte in the 200m individual medley).

MORE: Rivalries

With Prince William and Kate in the stands, he wasn’t the only one feeling giddy on Team USA. Seventeen year-old Missy Franklin, making history as the first female swimmer to take on seven events in a single Games, earned her third gold with a world record swim in the 200m backstroke; Katie Ledecky won gold in the 800m freestyle by an impressive 4.13 seconds; and Cullen Jones rocketed his way to a silver in the 50m freestyle.

For Phelps, the race to the wall at the Aquatics Center in London wasn’t as much of a nail-biter as it was in the Water Cube in Beijing, and didn’t require a close up review of the tape. In a last-lap surge after trailing for 150m, Phelps touched the wall 0.23 seconds ahead of silver medalist Chad le Clos, the South African who beat him by 0.05 seconds in the 200m butterfly five days ago. Milorad Cavic of Serbia, who lost by 0.01 seconds to Phelps in the photo finish in 2008, came in fourth. Plagued by back problems since the last Games, he acknowledged that he wasn’t the same man who gave Phelps the biggest scare of his history-making run of eight gold medals back then: “I cannot believe Phelps. I’m a one-trick pony and he’s the king.”

MORE: Not Done Yet: Michael Phelps Becomes the Most Decorated Olympian of All Time

That reign, at least in the pool, will end tomorrow, as Phelps swims the last race, the 4×100 medley relay, of his competitive career. “Once I’m done, once tomorrow is over, I think a lot more emotion will really come out,” he says. He has shown signs of mortality in London, falling to fourth in the opening 400m individual medley, and earning his first Olympic silver medal in the 200m butterfly. But his legacy will continue to ripple in the sport, with the likes of Franklin, Ledecky (who is 15) and others who now see the sport of swimming featured in prime time television and swimmers assuming the celebrity most often reserved for basketball players and baseball icons. “When I grew up, swimming was never broadcast on prime time, never seen on the cover of magazines,” says Phelps’s older sister Whitney, who was also a swimmer and brought her daughter Taylor, 6, to London to watch Phelps. “People have watched him grow as well as watched the sport grow.”

MORE: Michael Phelps: Built for Speed 

“Michael is the first Olympian I ever met when I was six, right before I started swimming,” says Ledecky. “So to hear a ‘good luck’ from him before the race was really cool.” Cool enough to win gold, and, more importantly, as the London organizers are hoping, inspire a generation.

(PHOTOS: Gabrielle Douglas’s Rise to Olympic Triumph)

Douglas, 16, did just that. In four events at the North Greenwich Arena, with all of the U.S.’s Olympic all-around champions — Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson and Nastia Liukin — as well as gymnastics greats Nadia Comaneci and Shawn Johnson in attendance, Douglas led from the start and never gave up the lead. Already a gold medalist with the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, Douglas earned the all-around title as well, becoming the first African American to do so and the first U.S. gymnast to claim both the team and all-around gold medals in a single Games.

“Wow,” she says, admitting she wasn’t aware of the second honor. “You learn something new every day.”

(MORE: Olympic Highlights in Photographs)

Russia’s Victoria Komova finished second for the silver, and in a tense finale, Aliya Mustafina of Russia and Douglas’ teammate Aly Raisman finished in third with identical scores. The International Gymnastics Federation stepped in to break the tie with the sum of each gymnast’s top three scores; Mustafina, who posted the highest score of the night with a memorable uneven-bars routine, 16.1, edged Raisman for the bronze by 0.567 points.

“I just wish I could have been up on the podium as well, but I’m really happy for the three girls who are up there,” says Raisman.

Raisman was the surprise entrant in the all-around competition after the qualifying round, in which she earned the second highest score, behind Komova. Because only two gymnasts from each country can compete in the all-around event, her teammate Jordyn Wieber, the current world champion, who finished fourth overall but behind two of her teammates, watched the competition from the stands.

(MORE: Olympic Outlook: In Gymnastics, Meet America’s Flying Squirrel)

Known for her consistency and steely focus, Raisman uncharacteristically had several wobbles on the beam, nearly falling off but maintaining her balance to earn a 14.333, the lowest score she received in performing on that apparatus in her three events in London. “I was last up, so I think I was just nervous,” she says. “I was trying to stay warm, but it’s hard when you’re waiting, so I felt like it was a really long time, and I just got a little bit nervous.”

Nerves have usually been Douglas’ problem. At her first national championships as a senior competitor, she fell off the beam three times during her 90-sec. routine. But it was a different Douglas who showed up in London — focused, confident and unflappable. “Many people worried about her mental toughness,” says her coach, Liang Chow. “But today she demonstrated that she can handle it, that she can handle the toughest job. It was a wonderful performance under huge pressure for a 16-year-old.”

(MORE: Gabby Douglas: Team USA’s Flip Artist)

What made the difference? “Definitely training,” says Douglas. “It’s tough for me to focus. I’m like, ‘Focus!’ and then it’s, ‘Oh, something shiny.’ It’s definitely hard because you want to see what everybody is doing. But if you want to stay on top, you have to learn to focus, so I trained my body so every time someone went, I turned my back and focused on my routines.”

The support from her two families helped as well. “I think what helped ground her was all of us coming together as a family unit,” says Hawkins. “We all told her the same thing — believe in yourself, and you have nothing to worry about. There is no place for fear.” Her brother John told her, “Put your body on the line. Don’t give up.” Her sister Arielle, who gets credit for spotting Douglas’ talent as a 3-year-old who could do perfectly straight cartwheels, told her to believe in herself and do what she does in practice. Her host mom Missy told her to do what she does every day in Iowa. Chow told her the same: “Connect with me and with the equipment, and don’t worry about the scores. Leave that to the judges,” he said.

And it worked. “Physically, yes, she was prepared. We all knew that,” says Martha Karolyi, the U.S. national team coordinator. “But lots of people had a question mark about her ability to focus, and really, this quality has improved in the last five months. She had such a great improvement, it’s incredible in such a short time. I haven’t seen any gymnast go from an average good gymnast five months ago to climb up to be the best in the world. That’s the truth.”

(MORE: U.S. Women Gymnasts Win First Team Gold Since 1996)

Chow admits that when Douglas first entered his gym, in October 2010, he could see her talent but wasn’t sure he wanted to take her on. It was 18 months to the London Games, and he was worried there wasn’t enough time to mold raw ability into an Olympic champion. But Douglas, who lives in Virginia Beach, Va., begged her mother to allow her to train with Chow and his wife Liwen Zhuang after watching him on television coaching Shawn Johnson at the Beijing Games. Chow was impressed by the fact that the determined 14-year-old was willing to move away from her close-knit family to train to be a world-class gymnast. He couldn’t turn her away.

And now he’s grateful he didn’t. After falling just short of the gold in the all-around in Beijing with Shawn Johnson, Chow told NBC that the gold “is a wonderful dream come true — to have an Olympic champion.”

Even Hawkins is still in shock over the transformation. “It’s just amazing, when I look at where she was when I brought her to him and where she is now,” says Hawkins. “I’m utterly amazed at what they have done in one and a half years. To see the great strides they have made together as coaches and athlete, it’s just mind-boggling.”

(MORE: Heartache at Gymnastics: U.S.’s Jordyn Wieber Misses Qualifying for All-Around Final)

Chow began by playing on Douglas’ strengths: her lean physique and natural grace, which he crafted into one of the more crowd-pleasing and difficult uneven-bars routines in the competition. Her gravity-defying releases off the bar prompted Karolyi to call her the Flying Squirrel, and in the all-around, she says, “the Flying Squirrel was flying extremely high.”

And that pesky beam that brought her down at her first national championship? She kept both her composure and her balance through a wobble on the 4-in.-wide apparatus and earned the highest score of the night in that event.

“What I admire is, she performed with extreme lightness, and that is one of the qualities that actually the international judges appreciated,” says Karolyi, who is notorious for her exacting demands on gymnasts. “She wasn’t struggling. She wasn’t just barely pulling through the skills. She was really flying in the air like her little name says.”

(PHOTOS: Twenty Gymnasts to Watch in the Event Finals)

“She did great,” says Comaneci of Douglas’ performance. “She is very athletic, but the great thing is, she also has artistry. She is a combination of both, which is great. I am happy she is representing the sport well.”

It wasn’t long ago that Douglas couldn’t have imagined receiving such a comment from a role model like Comaneci or that she would be earning praises from the likes of Johnson and Liukin. In fact, when she saw Johnson for the first time, at Chow’s gym, she thought, ‘Wow, that’s Shawn Johnson! I’ve only seen her on TV!’ and found herself staring, open-mouthed, during Johnson’s training sessions. It was the image of Chow hugging Shawn at the Olympics that drew her to him, and to Iowa, when she vowed, “I want to be there.” It took nearly two years of sacrifice, but she is finally there.

“I … am … fine” is what she told her coach, John Geddert, in a don’t-even-bring-it-up answer to his question that morning. Later that day, walking into the arena before the competition, Wieber’s mother Rita said Jordyn was “good but will be better once the team goes in there and rocks it.”

(PHOTOS: Gabrielle Douglas’s Rise to Olympic Triumph)

And rock it they did. Wieber got the U.S. women off to a rousing start with an emphatic vault that erased any doubts about her recovery from disappointment. Wieber, Gabrielle Douglas and McKayla Maroney performed the Amanar, the most difficult vault in competition. All three hardly budged on their landings after flying through the air in 21⁄2 twists. Scoring an impressive 15.933, Wieber set the tone for what in gymnastics counts as a rout, while Maroney, the world champion in the event, threw off a textbook vault that earned the highest score of the night and will likely be used to teach gymnasts for years to come. “I think that was the best one I ever had in my life, and I’m really happy to be able to do that for the team,” says Maroney. It took four Olympic Games, but the U.S. finally had its team gold.

The worries about the U.S. women’s squad going into the team event were dispelled so quickly and so definitively that it was easy to forget that Wieber wasn’t the only wild card. The talented Douglas, known as the Flying Squirrel, has also wavered during high-pressure meets. Not in London. “She did wonderful work and handled a tough job and big pressure,” says her coach, Liang Chow.

Beginning with Wieber’s stuck landing on the vault, the U.S. proceeded to knock off each event—vault, bars, beam and floor exercise—with impressive precision, making hardly a mistake among them. “If you look in the history of gymnastics, you see very few of them—very, very few of them,” says legendary coach Bela Karolyi of teams able to produce 12 solid routines. “Back in the old days, from time to time the Soviet Union teams have done that trick, but ever since, I’ve never seen it.”