Looking back on 2008: Michael Phelps

From The Hindu:

Extraordinary Phelps proves well-equipped for return to normality

Making his exploits seem commonplace is the latest achievement of the world’s most successful Olympian. By Donald McRae.

AP

“I was pretty terrible,” Michael Phelps says with a low laugh as he relives the moment when he slipped back into the pool for the first time since winning his eighth gold medal at the Beijing Olympics almost four months ago. “I went out quietly, on my own, and I swam a couple of miles. I didn’t quite know what to expect because this is the longest time I’ve ever been out in the pool — but I was not very good.”

Phelps, typically, manages to sound less like the greatest Olympian of all time than just a normal human being lamenting the state of his body after a long and indulgent break. He may have produced the most extraordinary sporting feat of this year, or any other, by winning 17 consecutive Olympic races in nine days but Phelps remains so refreshingly low-key that it becomes easy to understand why he is well-equipped to deal with the surreal aftermath of his epic achievement.

This is what you notice most when talking to Phelps: his apparent ordinariness is more compelling than all the gold medals or even the fact that his arms, when he spreads them wide, span a staggering six feet seven inches. He may be currently consumed by a whirlwind of American stardom and nationwide appearances, but Phelps is more interesting when he looks ahead to his strangely chaotic return to training at home in Baltimore.

“I spent most of my time training for Beijing at the University of Michigan because that’s where (his coach) Bob Bowman was based. At Michigan I trained alongside swimmers on the university team. But I’m more excited about me and Bob returning for good to our old pool at Meadowbrook in Baltimore. You get a whole range of people there. It’s quite likely that, once I’m back training, in one lane next to me you might have a baby in swimmer-diapers and in the adjoining lane you’ll have a little old lady taking her daily exercise.”

The very idea of the “superhuman” Phelps churning through the water while a nappy-wearing baby and a pensioner bob about in his mighty wake, gives a new slant to the concept of elite training. Phelps earned a $1m (about £674,000) Beijing bonus from Speedo for breaking Mark Spitz’s record of winning seven gold medals — and he and Bowman will use the money to transform Meadowbrook into a “world-class” facility. But, for the moment, he seems happy to be training alongside such unlikely swimming partners.

“It’s a special environment and people in Baltimore are very down to earth. These last months have been nuts and that’s why I’m looking forward to things calming down so, back home, I might reflect on the Olympics.”

Phelps reveals a grittier edge when considering how he might continue to motivate himself after the glittering fulfilment of Beijing. When he began swimming with Bowman at the age of 11, he was driven by anger, as he thrashed through the water seething over the break-up of his parents’ marriage. He also used swimming to transform himself from a geeky kid who was bullied and on Ritalin to control his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. By the time he was an Olympic champion he had found new ways to inspire himself. “In my locker for a while before Beijing I had a photo of Ian Crocker (the last swimmer to defeat Phelps when he beat him in the 100m butterfly in July 2005). And then I stuck up an article where (the great Australian swimmer) Ian Thorpe said eight golds were impossible. I saw that every morning before training and that made me work harder.”

What can he do now to rekindle that brutal competitiveness? “I can go online and see what my competitors have been saying about me. When someone doubts me that really fires me up.”

It seems curious that Phelps should still care what his rivals might say about him. “I’ve always done it. I go online with the specific intention of finding motivation for myself. I’m sure I’ll find some comments which will intensify my desire to compete.”

Will his disdain for losing remain just as searing? “Definitely. That’s not going to change over the next four years.”

When they started working together, Phelps used to scrawl his aims for a new year on a scruffy sheet of paper he handed to Bowman. Does he now feel ready to email his latest new year goals to his old coach? “I have some ideas but it’s only when I get properly back in the water that I’ll really be sure of these new goals. But it’s likely I will swim some different events that I haven’t done much of at international level. That diversity will keep it interesting.”

The four-yearly peak of the Olympics, however, remains paramount. When I last interviewed Phelps, before the 2004 Games, where he won six gold and two bronze medals, he told me how he had stitched the letters A-T-H-E-N-S into his swimming cap, which he left on his bedside table at night so it was the first thing he saw when the alarm went off at 5.30 a.m. for training.

Did he stitch “Beijing” into his cap? “We didn’t do that in Michigan but now that we’re back in Baltimore we already have ‘London’ stitched into the cap. It reminds me how excited I am about 2012.”

Will he again try to win eight gold medals? “I definitely won’t go for eight,” Phelps stresses. “I won’t repeat that kind of schedule. It will be a little calmer and more relaxed in London.” But, presumably, he will chase six or even seven golds in 2012? “We have no idea at this stage. But I won’t rule that out.”

Phelps sounds as sincere as he is diplomatic when praising British swimmers like Rebecca Adlington, who won two gold medals in Beijing and ruined the Olympic dream of his Baltimore colleague Katie Hoff. “(Adlington) did amazingly well. I definitely noticed that the British team were getting faster and faster. They’re one of the teams we’re going to be watching these next few years.”

Phelps visited London for the first time immediately after Beijing. “It was great. We walked around and did some shopping. And we also got to play tennis at Wimbledon — which was very cool.”

In the Olympic village in Beijing Phelps insists that “I was thrilled to see guys like Nadal and Federer in close-up. I loved seeing those great athletes. It also meant the world to me, as an NBA fan, when great (basketball) players like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James told me they were pulling for me. That was exciting because I’m the sort of guy who switches on (ESPN’s) Sports Center as soon as I wake up so I can see what Kobe and LeBron, or Nadal and Federer, did the night before.”

Phelps presumably also revelled in dining out with Rio and Anton Ferdinand. “I met the Ferdinand brothers through a friend of mine, a real soccer guy, and we hung out together one night in London. Since then, so I’ve read, Anton got traded. How’s that going?”

I wish I had the time to explain the younger Ferdinand’s “trade” to Sunderland, and the mysteries of Roy Keane’s mind. But even discussing Keane’s beard would probably set Phelps off again on the wonders of facial hair — for he has extolled the “excellent Fu Manchu moustache” he likes to grow when out of the public eye.

But we’re soon caught up in a different anecdote which symbolises his strange new life outside the pool. “Oh man,” he exclaims, “the Lindsay Lohan thing summed up the craziness. There were all these stories she was bombarding me with texts but I never talked to her. I never even got a text from her. It’s weird how these stories get invented and then blown up.”

Other more tangible celebrity encounters have meant much to Phelps. As a large chunk of our past interview had been spent with him telling me how he was consumed by hip-hop, and how he spent his daily five hours in the pool humming various gangsta rap ditties to himself, it’s inevitable that Phelps should be most proud of the fact that ‘Lil’ Wayne now numbers among his millions of fans. The rapper hunted down Phelps at the MTV awards and, amid the bedlam, "Lil’ Wayne presented me with this iPod which contained 40 unreleased songs he had recorded — and one was called ‘Michael Phelps’.

In that song he just keeps rapping ‘Michael Phelps, Michael Phelps, swimming through the water ...’ I like all the songs he gave me but obviously that means the most.”

Phelps seems to have transfixed the world, from George Bush to Lil’ Wayne to the Ferdinand brothers, with his Olympic exploits.

But, personally, I most like the image of him returning to work in Baltimore early next year. I can see the greatest of all swimmers tearing up and down a crowded pool as, alongside a little old lady and a bemused baby watching him in adjacent lanes, he hums Lil’ Wayne’s rap to himself — “Michael Phelps, Michael Phelps, swimming through the water ...”

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008