Michael Phelps and Novak Djokovic ran into each other at the Olympic Village

Published Nov. 15, 2016 2:15 p.m. ET

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Chris Chase

Two of the world's greatest athletes walk into a village. One, the greatest Olympian in history, gets starstruck when he notices the other, the best tennis player in the world. Then, in the ultimate: Stars, They're Just Like Us! moment, the greatest Olympian ever psychs himself into going up to the one of the greatest tennis players ever to say hello.

Let Michael Phelps describe his Olympic village encounter with Novak Djokovic:

I literally was like, 'yeah, that's Djokovic!' You know, you smile, you nod. I said (to myself), 'I'm going to say hi, I don't care.' We ended up talking, talking about the event schedule. When he's competing, when I'm competing ... Super nice, super down to earth. Easy to talk to. It was something that was cool to see. I've watched a lot of his matches on TV and he's obviously had a lot of epic ones.

That's about as much Olympic star power as you could get. Maybe if Phelps had run into Usain Bolt or Serena Williams it'd have topped the Djokovic encounter, for now though, this is the random moment to beat at the Rio Games. (Checks to see if Coach K and Kohei Uchimura have been photographed playing Pokemon Go together. Finds nothing. Moves on.)

I really hope this leads Djokovic to bringing back his impersonations and adding Phelps to the repertoire - he's easy; get the wingspan of a pterodactyl and swing those arms back and forth under your pecs, all while dithering about retirement and saying "um" a lot.

Phelps' description of the meeting is great, by the way. It's interesting that he's now the seasoned veteran at the Olympics. While Djokovic is no ingenue either, he's still younger than Phelps and considered to be in his, or right at the end of his, prime. Still, Phelps was a household name before anyone had even heard of the Djoker, so it's kind of amusing that Phelps was sort of like a fanboy.

Phelps didn't say anything about it in his conversation, yet I couldn't help but wonder if either had it in the back of their minds that the would-be Phelps vanquisher, Milorad Cavic (the guy who lost to Phelps at the Beijing Olympics by 0.01 seconds due to Phelps' crazy half-stroke finish), also competed under the Serbian flag, despite the fact that he's an American. Actually, that might have been a confusing conversation. So, you know, the smalltalk of "I race on Sunday," "zika, eh?" and "boy, there sure are a lot of Coca-Cola ads around here" probably worked best.

Also, Djokovic really should have tried to convince Phelps to play in the Olympic tennis tournament that now has as much star power as a People's Choice Awards.

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