The swimmers have all left the pool, but The Mag's Sue Hovey is still shaking water from her ears.

I don't know Jenny Thompson, but I'd like to meet her. I'd like to shake her hand and look into the eyes of a woman who owns 10 Olympic medals -- eight golds, one silver, one bronze -- more than any American woman ever, more than any female swimmer in Olympic history. I'd like to swap a few New Hampshire stories with her, find out if she likes the Sox. (I was born and raised in the Granite State; she calls Dover home.) The way I see it, Jenny Thompson is the Carlton Fisk of swimming -- the ultimate team player, the steady presence, the no-nonsense kind of star you'd expect from Live-Free-Or-Die country.

Fisk, of course, is best remembered for his dramatic 12th-inning homer in Game 6 of the '75 World Series. Never mind that the Sox lost Game 7. And excuse me if I fail to see how Thompson's career accomplishments are somehow diminished by the one thing she has never won: an individual Olympic gold.

I watched her swim all last week. I saw her twice come up short in the impossibly strong wake of Inge de Bruijn. I sat in the same room while she answered the same questions over and over. ("How disappointed are you?" "Do you have any regrets?") I stood in the same hallway while her mother consoled her in a corner. But what I'll remember most are those three electrifying relays -- how she was pulled from the pool by her veteran teammates after their world-record performance in the 4x100; how she held hands on the victory stand with her teen successors after leading them to an Olympic record in the 4x200; how she danced with abandon after swimming the fastest fly split ever on the way to another WR in the 4x100 medley. It all gave me chills to watch. Just like that famous replay of Pudge Fisk -- New Hampshire's Pudge Fisk -- waving his ball fair.

A year from now, Thompson will attend Columbia Medical School in my adopted city, New York, while some little girl makes waves at the Jenny Thompson Competition Pool in my home state. So excuse me if I'm not exactly impartial here. The woman has eight gold medals, people. Eight. How cool is that? Wicked cool, as we say in my neck of the woods.

"It's time for me to stop looking at what I don't have and look at what I do have," Jenny said after taking bronze in the 100 free, two days before winning that last relay gold. "I have a tremendous amount in my life to be grateful for and happy about. And winning these medals is just a small part of that."

I don't know Jenny Thompson, but I know I'm going to miss watching her swim.