I entered in three events: the 200 fly, 200 IM and 400 IM. I had also qualified for the 1,500 free, but I agreed I wouldn’t enter it. Every year since I was 13, I have had a deal with Bob that I would swim exactly one competitive mile race each year. It’s been one a year ever since.
On the second day, I swam the 400 IM and finished 11th with a time (4:25.97) that was well off my personal best. Bob told me to put it behind me and concentrate on the 200 fly, which was the event in which I had my one realistic chance to make the team. I came into the final as the third seed. Malchow, the defending Olympic silver medalist and world-record holder at 1:55.18, was the clear favorite. Behind him was a group of four swimmers who were capable of breaking 1:58: Jeff Somensatto of Auburn, Steve Brown of Stanford, Andrew Mahaney from the Atlantis Swim Club, and me.
Up in the stands, my family’s seats weren’t very good, so my mom moved down to a standing position in a no-standing area. She wasn’t obstructing anyone’s view, but an usher came by and told her to find her seat. Politely, but firmly, she told him, “My son is about to swim in the finals of the Olympic trials. Please give me two minutes. After this race, you can do what you need to do.”
Bob had told me before the race that I’d have a chance to make up ground over the last 50 meters, but I’d need to be within striking range at the third turn. Instead, I was fifth at the 150 wall. Ironically my mom and Bob each told me the same thing, that they were preparing their “We still love you” speeches in their minds. My mom actually turned her head away from the pool and started watching the scoreboard. She missed the last 50 entirely. At the far end of the pool deck, Bob and Murray were standing on blocks, trying to look over the people in front of them and get a clear view of the race. As Bob began squinting to see how far back I was, Murray started broadcasting the details of the race into his ear. At 150 meters, Murray said, “Uh oh, he’s pretty far back. It doesn’t look good.”
I could feel myself getting faster over that last 50, even though I didn’t see where I was compared to the rest of the field. After I touched the wall, I couldn’t look up at the board right away. I heard the announcer say my name and I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. Second? But second is on the Olympic team. Really, second? I had to remove my goggles to make sure I was seeing it correctly. Sure enough, there it was on the board: Malchow first in 1:56.87; Phelps second in 1:57.48. I had this ear-to-ear smile come across my face. I looked up into the stands and couldn’t find my mom right away, because she had moved.
On the opposite end of the arena, Murray and Bob jumped up and down, tried to high-five each other, missed badly and fell off the blocks they were standing on. Anyone possessing a tape of that momentous celebration should please send one copy to America’s Funniest Home Videos, a second to ESPN’s Top-Ten Bloopers and another one to me. I’ll handle the rest.
Malchow and I first congratulated one another in the water. Then as I started walking along the pooldeck, Whitney came up and put her arms around me. That hug meant more than I could say. I knew how hard the last four years had been for her. I knew how much she wanted to swim at the trials. I knew her bad luck was eating away at her, but at that moment, there was nobody else I wanted to see more than Whitney. I was too excited—and too young and new to everything—to find the words to tell her, but if I hadn’t seen her put in all that work, if I hadn’t seen the sacrifices she made and if I hadn’t seen firsthand that you can’t take success for granted, there is no way I would have been on that Olympic team. Every time I blew up at Bob or decided some level of extra effort wasn’t necessary, I knew, because of Whitney, that I needed to blow off my steam and get back to work, because if I wasn’t willing to do that, somebody else certainly was and he would kick my butt when we got into the pool. In a very real way, her hard work had put a Phelps on the Olympic team after all.
In some ways, the post-race press conference was almost harder than the event. I sat at a table and stared out at many more reporters than I had ever seen in one place. I had been used to one or two, but a whole colony of them? I talked about the race, what it meant to be going to the Olympics and what I did at school. Then came the curveball. “So, do you have a girlfriend?” I had no idea what to do or say or how to answer that. My face got pretty red as I told them I did. Then they asked her name, which I gave them. I also told them the fact that she was attending Dulaney High, a rival school. They practically asked me for her social security number. Then someone asked, “Did you kiss her?” Bob was sitting next to me and watching me squirm with every question. He covered the microphone with his hands and quietly said, “No comment,” to let me know I didn’t have to answer everything. I told them “No comment,” but I had mentioned her name without her permission because I was just so caught off guard by the line of questioning. I apologized to her the next time we spoke and even though she was okay with it, I felt like an idiot. I was pretty on edge about doing interviews after that if I didn’t know who I was talking to.
I went into drug testing afterward and happened to sit next to Jeff Somensatto in the waiting room. I felt weird about it, because I had just touched him out of a spot on the Olympic team, and I remember thinking how lousy it would have felt to finish third. Jeff was a complete gentleman about it, congratulating me and telling me to bring back a medal in Sydney. A medal? Me? Wow.
Bob and I were getting testy on the flight back to Baltimore. We flew back late and Bob had told me to come in at 9 a.m. the next day. I was tired and called him that morning to ask if we could train in the afternoon instead, and he said 9 a.m. would be just fine, thank you. After practice, Bob drove me to a local studio for my first live TV interview on CNN. They sat me behind a huge desk in a chair that swiveled. The words that came out of my mouth were fine, but I was pretty nervous about the first big interview—the open space, the microphone, the earpiece, the lights. So what did I do? I spent the whole interview swiveling. Hello, America, this is Michael. Here’s Michael’s left side and now here is his right side. Which side do you like best?
Bob came over to the house afterward with a two-page list of to-dos and things he wanted to discuss with my mom. At the top of the list were the reasons I should come back home immediately after the end of the swimming competition during the first week of the Games rather than stay for the second week, which traditionally has no swimming events.
First of all, athletes who went to Olympic Games were housed in a dedicated Olympic village, a series of dorm rooms surrounded by shops such as restaurants, a post office, a movie house, a souvenir shop, a laundromat and a large cafeteria. It’s a pretty cool set up, with access limited to people with official accreditation. Athletes living in the village had a history of living double lives. Until they completed their events, they would turn in at 10, drink carrot juice and barely make a sound. Once they were done, they would have a lot of pent-up energy to release, and the village could become a very different place. Bob figured it wasn’t a great place for a 15-year-old to be during the second week of the Olympics, since I wasn’t used to fending for myself yet. Because Bob wasn’t one of the official coaching staff, he would be in Sydney, but wouldn’t have access to the village. My family couldn’t be in the village either, so Susan Teeter, our team manager, kept a close eye on me. “If you get to the next Olympics,” Bob said, “I promise you can do whatever you want during the second week.”
Bob didn’t really talk about my chances of winning a medal, but he suggested a goal of trying to drop my personal best by one second during the Games. It sounded like a reasonable plan. On August 20, I left my home for Pasadena. We were planning to head for Australia from the West Coast, so my first overseas adventure was just beginning. My mom had been through a long (think textbook-sized) checklist of things to pack or take care of before I left. But she couldn’t make me remember everything. I was always losing my room key at the Doubletree Pasadena. One morning when Bob had planned to meet me for breakfast, he walked by the front desk and there I was standing in a bathroom
towel at the front desk of the Doubletree, asking for a new room key. I roomed with Aaron Peirsol, a 17-year-old backstroker, during the trip. We spent a lot of time talking about how we could be the youngest American guys to medal. Each time Aaron talked about winning a medal, he used the word “sweet.” The word was starting to grow on me. It sounded like a sweet idea.
10
THE OLYMPIAN
On our way to Sydney, one of the flight attendants came up to the three teenagers on the U.S. swim team: Aaron, Megan Quann and me. It was still a year before the tragedy of September 11, so rules were more relaxed then. “We have a surprise for you guys,” the woman said. “The captain wants to know if you would like to join him in the cockpit.” Wow, what a thrill. We were overlooking Sydney Harbor and we stared down into the Sydney Opera House, an open-air theater right on the water.
Soon after we arrived and went through team processing at the Olympic village, we took a short flight to Brisbane for another training camp. Practices went well and one day I went with my teammates to one of the local casinos. I had no money to wager and couldn’t do it anyway because I was too young, but it was like a mini-Las Vegas. I had a 10 p.m. curfew during the trip to make sure I couldn’t get into trouble. I sort of did anyway.
A day before the swimming competition started, we moved back into the village. Aaron and I roomed together and he and I would hang out with Jamie Rauch and Tommy Hannan, two of our teammates, to play Tony Hawk and James Bond video games all the time. I didn’t know about the electricity conversion between the U.S. and Australia, so when I tried to hook up the system when Aaron and Tommy weren’t around, I fried the video game. When the guys walked back into the room, I sort of played dumb for a while, but I had to fess up. To make matters worse, the system actually belonged to Brian Jones, a swimmer who narrowly missed making the Olympic team at the trials.
At big competitions, especially the Olympics, you can’t go anywhere without your ID badge hanging from your neck. It’s usually a laminated piece of thick paper with your picture, a bar code, your name and nationality and a list of where you can and can’t go while attending the competition. You take it off to train, compete, and sleep, but it stays around your neck for almost everything else. Lose it at the Olympics and you can’t go to the village, you can’t go to the pool; it’s like you’re stuck in glue.
In my first morning swim, I had qualified for the semifinal of the 200 fly, winning my heat in 1:57.30 and finishing with the third fastest time overall behind Malchow and Denis Sylant’yev of Ukraine. Somehow, I heard Hilary call my name after the race, even though I had no idea where she was sitting.
In the semifinal, I lowered my time to 1:57.00, but placed third in my heat, which Tom won. As usual, Bob and I had a little side drama. In the States, the public address announcer will usually introduce the swimmers in numerical lane order, starting with Lane 1 and ending with Lane 8. In Sydney, they did it differently. Because the swimmers with the fastest times were in the middle lanes and the ones in the end lanes were the ones with slowest qualifying times, they began the introductions with lanes 1 and 8, then 2 and 7, 3 and 6 and 4 and 5. I was seeded into Lane 4 for my preliminary swim, but I wasn’t prepared for the fact that I would be the last person announced. When they said my name, everyone jumped onto the blocks and I jumped on before tying my suit and tucking the strings inside. After the race, Bob jokingly told me I should be prepared the next time and look after the suit. It stayed on, thankfully, but the strings flapped around, which was like showing up for a business meeting with your tie untied. That evening, I forgot about the order of swimmers and forgot to tie my suit again. The time was okay with Bob, but not the suit. “Michael, these are the Olympic Games,” he told me. “You are going to treat them right. What did we say about preparation?”
Yes, preparation. The next night, I planned to leave the village early to get to the pool for the final with plenty of time to spare. Bob wanted me there two and a half hours before the race and, as always, he had the prerace time meticulously planned, from warmup to stretching to swim down to racing. We traveled separately because as mentioned, Bob wasn’t an official member of the coaching staff and couldn’t stay in the village. But I had very precise instructions. What could go wrong? Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Bob …”
“Michael, are you here at the pool?”
“No, I’m going back to the village.”
“What! Now! Why?”
“I took the wrong credential. I was heading out the door and I grabbed Aaron’s instead.”
This was bad. Of all days to have a brain cramp, this was the worst. I could tell Bob was upset, but yelling would have done no good at that point. “Well, okay, let’s get here and figure out what to do,” he said. I got to the pool with a little over an hour to spare. Bob was outwardly calm and we shortened our warmup to get me ready. I was jittery as I walked to the blocks, so instead of stretching behind my lane, I walked over to wish Tom luck behind his lane. Swimmers don’t usually do that, and I’m not sure what I was thinking. I guess I was living the atmosphere and blowing off nervous energy. I was kind of scared to tell you the truth. I told Tom, “Let’s go, baby. We can do this.” It was more a sign of nerves than sportsmanship.
I swam a good race. Just as I had hoped, I lowered my personal best again, this time to 1:56.50, but I never quite caught up to the leaders. Tom won the race in 1:55.35. I was fifth, .33 seconds behind the bronze medalist. After the race, the Malchow family was encouraging the Phelps family all over the building. Tom patted me on the back. “The best is ahead of you,” he said. In the stands, Tom’s parents graciously came up to my mom and told her, “Michael’s time will come.” I had to sort through my emotions after the race. I had lowered my PR by nearly a second, but I had also watched Tom’s victory ceremony and really wanted to be on the stand with him.
Bob sent me back to the pool for a workout the next day and got some criticism from some of my teammates for not letting me blow off some steam in Sydney all day. Bob wanted to get me psyched up about next season, starting with the Spring Nationals in Austin next March, so he showed me my workout for the day on a piece of graph paper. In the margin, he wrote, Austin WR. It didn’t take much to get me fired up. I was tired from the travel, the expectation, the whole experience, but I was already getting edgy about starting the next season. After the workout, we went to a waterpark that was adjacent to the warm-down pool. I slid down a few runs with some of the guys and basically screwed around and did nothing for most of the day. It was great to have time off to not think about the race for a few hours.
Soon I was back in the village, trying to take advantage of the 15-hour time difference and call some people back home. I wasn’t getting much support from Tom, Jamie, and Aaron, who overheard one of my conversations and started making background noises. “Guys, I’m trying to talk to my girlfriend,” I’d tell them, as my face turned into a tomato. Then the word started bouncing back at me like a tennis ball.
“Girlfriend, huh?”
“Girlfriend? Mike’s got a girlfriend.”
“Michael Phelps, paging Michael Phelps, would you please report to your girlfriend.” “Hey,” I told her, “can we talk later? There’s bad static everywhere except on the phone. I need to call you back.”
I also called Whitney, who had stayed home to start classes at UNLV and reconcile herself with a swimming career that was coming to an end. I told her I understood her decision not to come to Sydney. I knew it was hard for her to be around swimming and especially to watch swimmers she used to beat win medals at the Olympics. Reporters have noticed over the years that she hasn’t come to as many meets as my mom and Hilary. They ask about jealousy, but they misread that completely. Whitney has always been incredibly supportive of me, but it was hard for her to go to meets and not be able to participate herself. I know she wishes she’d had a chance to see how good she could have been, but she has always been happy for my success.
Whatever she’s felt inside, I love her for the way she puts a smile on for me. I told her how much I missed her and was looking forward to catching up on her next visit home.
The next day I went to the AT&T family center, a dedicated place created by one of the Olympic sponsors where athletes can spend time with their families and their families can relax, eat, and watch other events on television. I was there with my aunts Amy and Krista, my uncle BJ and Pat Calhoun, one of the breaststrokers on the team. My dad was there, too. He had flown over on his own. It was good to see him, but we hadn’t spent nearly as much time together in the months leading up to the Games. I knew for a long time that he had been seeing a woman named Lois. They moved in together for a while and we got along with her reasonably well. It was hard for me to like a different woman besides my mom, but I appreciated the fact that Lois tried to make an effort with us. A couple of times, I remember her suggesting to my dad that he should take us somewhere, either with or without her, but I always had the sense that she respected the fact that we were a part of his life and, therefore, a part of her life. For that reason, awkward as it was, we got along with her okay.
After my dad split up with Lois, he started dating a woman named Jackie. I hadn’t spoken with her much, so I didn’t know much about her. She was with my dad that day. At one point, I got up to go to the bathroom and he followed me over there. I guess none of us really noticed his hand in the few minutes we were there with him, but as we walked into the bathroom, Dad reached his hand out and said, “Hey, look what I got.” I was stunned. It was a ring. What do you say after seeing something like that? “Oh, um, cool,” I told him, and I tried to change the topic. Did it mean he was engaged or already married? Can we talk about something else? I was there to enjoy the Olympic experience and have some fun. Now I wanted to crawl under something. When we rejoined the group, my dad made a formal introduction. “This is my new wife, Jackie,” he said. Wife it was. He and Jackie had married after the Trials. Why didn’t he tell anyone? Why weren’t we invited? Sure he had grown apart from people, but did he not want us to be a part of something in his life as important as that?
Beneath the Surface Page 9