Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps is an American swimmer born on June 30, 1985, in Baltimore, Maryland. He is widely recognized as the most decorated Olympian in history, holding a record 28 Olympic medals, including 23 golds. Phelps began swimming at a young age, encouraged by his mother after being diagnosed with ADHD, which he found to provide focus and discipline. Under the mentorship of coach Bob Bowman, Phelps quickly rose through the ranks, setting national and world records starting in his early teens. His Olympic debut came at age 15 during the 2000 Sydney Games, where he finished fifth in the 200-meter butterfly.
Phelps achieved remarkable success at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, winning eight gold medals in a single Games, surpassing the previous record set by Mark Spitz. He continued to compete at the 2012 London Olympics, finishing with six additional medals, and announced his retirement afterwards. However, he returned for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, adding five golds and a silver to his tally. Beyond his swimming accolades, Phelps has been open about his struggles with mental health, advocating for awareness and support for those facing similar challenges. He remains involved in the sport as a coach and through his foundation, while also addressing issues in competitive swimming, including anti-doping regulations.
Michael Phelps
Swimmer
- Born: June 30, 1985
- Place of Birth: Baltimore, Maryland
SPORT: Swimming
Early Life
Michael Fred Phelps II was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 30, 1985. He was the third of three children, born after sisters Hilary and Whitney. His parents, Fred Phelps and Debbie Davisson Phelps, earned teaching certificates at Fairmont State College in West Virginia, where Fred played football. Debbie became a schoolteacher and an administrator in suburban Baltimore, and Fred became a trooper for the Maryland State Police. They divorced in 1992 when Phelps was seven years old.
On the advice of a family physician, Debbie got her children involved in organized swimming and eventually settled on the North Baltimore Swim Club (NBSC). Diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when he was eleven, Phelps benefited from the focus and commitment that swimming required of him. In 1997, he began training with Bob Bowman. Phelps set national records as a twelve-year-old, and Bowman knew that he was coaching a swimmer with a bright future in the sport.
The Road to Excellence
Under the guidance of Bowman, Phelps flourished with the NBSC. At the age of fourteen, he was a top-sixteen swimmer nationally in the 400-meter individual medley and the 200-meter butterfly. At the 2000 Olympic trials in Indianapolis, Indiana, he finished second in the 200-meter butterfly, qualifying him for the US Olympic team. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, Phelps finished fifth in the 200-meter butterfly with a time of 1:56.60. He was only fifteen years old.
Returning to the United States, Phelps had some important decisions to make. After consulting with his parents and Bowman, he signed a professional contract with Speedo, making him the youngest male swimmer ever to turn professional, at the age of sixteen. Soon after, Phelps signed with sports agent Peter Carlisle at Octagon. Although these decisions took away his collegiate eligibility, he was able to sustain his rigorous training while finishing school at Towson High, from which he graduated in 2003.
The Emerging Champion
At the 2001 spring nationals in Austin, Texas, Phelps won the 200-meter butterfly in 1:54.92, making him the youngest male swimmer ever to set a world record. Of the nine world records set at the 2003 World Swimming Championships in Barcelona, Spain, he set five of them. He was eighteen.
In Long Beach, California, at the 2004 US Olympic trials, Phelps swam six individual events over an eight-day period, winning the 200- and 400-meter individual medleys and the 200-meter freestyle and butterfly and finishing second in the 100-meter butterfly and 200-meter backstroke. No American swimmer before him had ever qualified in six individual Olympic events.
At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, Phelps swam five individual events and three relays, dropping the 200-meter backstroke. The swimming venue was outdoors, and he swam eighteen races in nine days in the Mediterranean heat. He won his first Olympic gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley in world-record time, 4:08.26. Then, he proceeded to win gold medals in the 200-meter butterfly, also in world-record time; the 200-meter individual medley; the 100-meter butterfly, upsetting Ian Crocker; and in two relays, the 4x200-meter freestyle and the 4x100-meter medley. He also won bronze medals in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay and the 200-meter freestyle. In the latter event, he finished behind two of the most successful freestyle swimmers ever, Australian Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands. He was nineteen.
Continuing the Story
Essential to Phelps’s success as a swimmer was choosing to remain at the NBSC and train with Bowman. In 2004, when Bowman decided to replace University of Michigan’s legendary swim coach Jon Urbanchek and assume the head-coaching position at Club Wolverine, Phelps agreed to accompany his coach to Ann Arbor, where he swam for Club Wolverine in preparation for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China.
At the 2007 World Swimming Championships in Melbourne, Australia, Phelps won seven gold medals—five individuals and two relays. In July, 2008, at the US Olympic trials, he won all five of the individual events he entered: the 200- and 400-meter individual medleys, the 100- and 200-meter butterfly, and the 200-meter freestyle.
Over a nine-day period in August 2008, at “the Water Cube,” the indoor swimming venue in Beijing, Phelps won a total of eight gold medals—five individuals and three relays—surpassing Mark Spitz’s previous Olympic record of seven gold medals won at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Of the five individual gold medals he won, Phelps set world records in four events. However, his most memorable race was in the 100-meter butterfly. He set an Olympic record with a time of 50.58 seconds and beat Milorad Čavić of Serbia by .01 seconds.
Phelps returned to the United States as the most decorated swimmer in Olympic history. By tying and breaking Spitz’s medal total for a single Olympics, he was awarded a $1 million bonus that his agent, Peter Carlisle, had negotiated with Speedo in 2003. He chose to use the money to start the Michael Phelps Foundation as a means of promoting swimming worldwide. By the time he was twenty-three years old, he had won a total of sixteen Olympic medals and hoped to win more at the 2012 Olympics in London, England.
Despite a weak beginning in the London Games in 2012, Phelps managed to earn six more medals in the remaining events (four gold and two silver), bringing his total to an unprecedented twenty-two medals, eighteen of which were gold. He had announced his retirement at the end of the 2012 Games. However, by the spring of 2014, he had retracted his decision to retire, stating that he would be taking part in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Only months later, he was suspended for three months by USA Swimming following his second charge for driving under the influence (DUI). Days later, Phelps had issued a public apology and had checked into a rehab facility in Arizona after interventions from his family.
Any doubts about Phelps's future performance after the London Games were proven to be unfounded. At the 2015 USA National Championships, Phelps (who was banned from the simultaneous World Championships in Russia because of his DUI charges) bested his own London 2012 Olympics times, as well as those of the World Championship winners. He won gold in the 100-meter butterfly and the 200-meter individual medley. Phelps returned to the Olympics for the fifth and final time at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. Phelps, already the most decorated Olympian in history, both maintained that title and added to his overall medal count with five gold medals and one silver at the 2016 Summer Games. Phelps finished his career with a total of twenty-three gold medals, and an overall medal count of twenty-eight.
In 2015, Phelps opened up publicly about dealing with ADHD, depression, and anxiety throughout his life. He admitted to contemplating suicide during the 2012 Olympic Games. He expanded his Michael Phelps Foundation to include access to educational information for schools and organizations to help young people, particularly, who may be struggling with mental health issues. Phelps also became an advocate and motivational speaker, addressing schools and organizations about the importance of opening up about mental health struggles.
On June 13, 2016, Phelps married Nicole Johnson, Miss California USA. The couple eventually settled in Paradise Valley, Arizona, and had four sons. Phelps continues to work with Bowman at Arizona State University, where he is an assistant coach for the Sun Devils' swim team.
In July 2017, for its annual Shark Week event, the Discovery Channel aired a special in which Phelps purportedly raced a great white shark. Viewers were disappointed when the "race" turned out to be footage of Phelps swimming alone, matched with a computer-generated shark image that simulated the animal's top swimming speed. A shark's top speed is approximately twenty-five miles per hour, while humans top out at around six miles per hour. The shark "won" by two seconds.
In 2024, ahead of the Paris games, Phelps and four-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Allison Schmitt testified to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee regarding the inadequacy of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Specifically, Phelps and Schmitt were demanding action by WADA to ban Chinese swimmers who tested positive during the 2021 games and were potentially going to compete in the 2024 games.
Summary
Integral to Michael Phelps’s accomplishments as a swimmer have been his natural physique, his work ethic, and his timing. Unlike all of his predecessors, who had to swim as amateurs, his career occurred at a time when Olympians in all sports were able to receive financial support for their training. As the most versatile swimmer the world has ever seen, he has taken the sport of swimming to its pinnacle. What Michael Jordan was to basketball and Tiger Woods was to golf, Michael Phelps became to swimming.
Bibliography
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Mather, Victor. "Michael Phelps 'Raced' a 'Shark,' Kind Of. Not Really." The New York Times, 24 July 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/sports/shark-week-michael-phelps.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2017.
Michael Phelps Foundation, michaelphelpsfoundation.org/. Accessed 27 June 2024.
McMullen, Paul. Amazing Pace: The Story of Olympic Champion Michael Phelps from Sydney to Athens to Beijing. Rodale, 2006.
Phelps, Michael. Michael Phelps: Beneath the Surface. With Brian Cazeneuve, Sports Publishing, 2008.
USA Today. Michael Phelps: The World’s Greatest Olympian. Triumph Books, 2008.
Vrentas, Jenny, and Michael Schmidt. “U.S. Swimming Stars Assail Antidoping Agency ahead of Olympics.” The New York Times, 25 June 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/sports/olympics/phelps-schmitt-olympics-antidoping-hearing.html. Accessed 27 June 2024.
Zuehlke, Jeffrey. Michael Phelps. Rev. ed., Lerner Publications, 2009.