For those living in America, and in a lot of other countries, the coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics highlighted the buildup and efforts of swimmer Michael Phelps to do the unthinkable and capture eight gold medals in a single Olympics games.  And yes, some people got sick of the nonstop coverage of Phelps in his bid to break Mark Sptiz record but even they can’t deny how incredible the feat was when he won number eight.

For some, the Games aren’t quite over yet but for Phelps, his journey to break a 36 year old record is done with and he will no doubt be looking for something to do while he waits until beginning serious swimming training again in January.  Some of the plans he’s discussed so far include chilling out with Tiger Woods and Michael Jordon and he even mentioned that it might be cool to hang with his favorite rapper Young Jeezy too.

More important than all of this though is that Phelps also stated that he was interested in playing in the WSOP.  He was recently quoted as saying, “I think it would be cool to play in the World Series of Poker.  My game is a little off right now, so I’ll have to start improving it a little bit. But I think that would be cool, and it would be cool to meet some of those poker guys.”

I’m sure that some of the poker guys would be glad to meet him as well.  I’m also sure that the WSOP would be extremely glad to add another star into its mix and who knows, someone may even pay for his buy-in to one of the events. 

But for those who doubt that Phelps is really serious about poker consider this: fellow Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard, who is a good friend of Phelps, said in an interview, “He sits on his computer for like ten hours a day playing online poker.  That’s all he does.”  Now this may be a slight exaggeration as he wouldn’t have time to train six hours a day or keep up with his 12,000 calorie diet but it does show that Phelps is serious about the game and, luckily, we may really see him in the WSOP in the future.