With a little help from his teammates, Michael Phelps made history yesterday at the Water Cube in Beijing winning his eight gold medal at a single Olympics surpassing the mark set by Mark Spitz in 1972.

Phelps barely won number seven by a fingernail Friday and the gold for the 4×100 meter medley relay wasn’t exactly in the bag before he even dove in the water to swim the ‘fly on the third leg. He smoked his 100 and freestyle teammate Jason Lezak swam the last leg to give the US team the victory.