If these Olympic Games were the most-watched event in TV history, drawing more than 211 million viewers over 17 days, then Michael Phelps may be the most-viewed athlete in history.

The 23-year-old swimmer, who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Games, also received a dominant portion of Olympics coverage, according to a new study that examined news coverage across TV, newspapers, radio and the web for the first nine days of the Olympics.

It found that Phelps was far and away the lead newsmaker for these Games, accounting for 26.5 percent of all coverage during the first week of the Olympics.

That was more than six times the No. 2 athlete, U.S. all-around gymnastics winner Nastia Liukin at 4 percent.

At No. 3, with 2.3 percent, was Mark Spitz, who didn’t even compete. And that coverage was really about Phelps, who broke Spitz’s 1972 record of seven gold medals.

“A look at this coverage suggests that much of this attention was about heroism and accomplishment rather than tugging emotional stories of sacrifice,” notes the study, released by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

“Consider the USA Today article that appeared on Aug. 15 with the headline, ‘Can Phelps Ever be Topped?’ That same article quoted U.S. basketball superstar Kobe Bryant as saying, ‘This can’t be normal.’”

Most of that coverage came on NBC, the Games carrier, whose news division devoted some three times the coverage to the Olympics as the other broadcasters. While the Olympics claimed nearly half, 48 percent, of the newshole on “Today” and “Nightly News with Brian Williams,” the Games accounted for less than half that on ABC and CBS.

By contrast, those two devoted much more time to the presidential election and the Russian invasion of Georgia than NBC News.

“NBC’s rival broadcast networks gave considerable attention to the Olympics as well, but not nearly as much as NBC,” says the report.

“ABC’s two main news shows, ‘Good Morning America’ and ‘ABC World News with Charles Gibson,’ devoted 16 percent of their airtime to the Olympics and China, while CBS’ two main news shows, ‘The Early Show’ and ‘CBS Evening News’, spent 19 percent of their newshole on the games.”

Still, across all platforms, Phelps’ record-breaking performance drove coverage. Swimming and diving accounted for 38 percent of all coverage through Aug. 17, receiving more attention than the John Edwards affair story or the U.S. economy in the news media that week.

The No. 2 sport, gymnastics, garnered just 11 percent of all Olympic coverage, while track and field received 10 percent.

The report also found differences in the attention given to the Games on TV and other media, noting that newspapers and radio devoted far less space to them.

Morning network television gave the most coverage to the games, accounting for more than a third of their airtime during their first half-hours. Nightly network news was just behind at 23 percent.

Radio news gave 13 percent of time to the Games, while talk radio hosts gave it even less time, just 5 percent.

Newspapers devoted 15 percent of their front-page space to the Olympics, and news web sites devoted 19 percent of their coverage to them.