After that news conference, Bob and I were whisked away to another one, to a much bigger room at what was called the Main Press Center a few minutes away from the Water Cube. By then, Darryl Seibel, the USOC’s chief communications officer, had joined us. He had been through these kinds of media get-togethers a time or two before and knew just what to say.
“Are you hungry?” he asked me.
“God, yes.”
“Cheeseburgers?”
“God, yes.”
Darryl sent a USOC volunteer to the McDonald’s in the press center for four cheeseburgers and fries, pronto. When the burgers arrived, Bob knocked back one in world-record time and I wolfed two.
Before we went out to meet the press again, I cleared my BlackBerry again of yet another avalanche of e-mails and text messages. I would clear it; it would fill up immediately; I would try to clear it; I’d get a new batch. I couldn’t keep up.
When we walked out onto the stage of the room at the press center for this next news conference, it was even clearer to me just how my life was changed. This room was enormous. It was crowded beyond capacity, too.
One reporter wanted to know if I had stayed in the Olympic Village or a fancy hotel. The village, of course, I said. I got to meet Rafael Nadal; he was one of my favorite tennis players to watch on television. I saw Roger Federer. I saw Dirk Nowitzki, I said.
What about Spitz? “Being able to have something like that to shoot for made those days when I was tired and I didn’t want to be there—you wanted to go home and sleep instead of work out—you look at him and you say, ‘I want to do this.’ It has been something I wanted to do and I’m just thankful for having him do what he did.”
Mostly, I said, I was just thankful.
For the way it had all worked out: “Seeing 8/8/08 and the opening ceremonies starting at eight, I guess it was maybe meant to be. I don’t know. For this to happen, everything had to fall into perfect place.”
For my teammates. For all the games of spades and Risk at night. The laughs we shared. “I just wanted to make sure I took every single moment in and every single swim in, every single moment with my teammates, so I would remember them. I don’t want to forget anything that happened.”
For my family, and for Bob. Bob said, “Clearly, an accomplishment of this magnitude doesn’t happen with just one or two people. There are a lot of people who have been involved in this process, from Michael’s family, my family for that matter, everyone back at NBAC where we started and will soon return, all our fans in Ann Arbor and Baltimore, Club Wolverine—I’d like to thank them for everything they’ve done. And particularly this amazing Olympic swimming team, the best group of guys I’ve ever been around—and it has just been an honor to be a part of it.”
For sure, I planned to be back at the Games in 2012, I said, but probably doing different events.
When that press conference wrapped up, we went across the street to the NBC compound at what was called the International Broadcast Center, to Dick Ebersol’s office. There, for the first time since arriving in Beijing, I got to spend more than just a moment with my family. President Bush had given me a message for my mom: Hug her for me, he had said. I made sure I followed the president’s orders.
Bob was in the room. So was Mike Unger of USA Swimming. Peter Carlisle, Drew Johnson, and Marissa Gagnon of Octagon were there, too, along with Dan Hicks, Rowdy Gaines, Andrea Kremer, Tommy Roy, Drew Esocoff, and a few others from NBC, and, of course, Ebersol, whose office had banks of TV screens. He asked, what do you want to see? The 400 free relay, I said before he could even really get the question out.
I could watch that relay 100 times and I think I’d still have the same reaction—wow, that really happened.
We watched that relay and some other races. We saw my mom cry watching me. Hilary, too.
Dick and I had come to occupy a special place in each other’s lives that had nothing to do with how many medals I won or how the broadcasts of the Olympics did in the ratings. He had supported me, stood up for my character, when I’d been called to account for drinking and driving; just a few weeks later, he was badly hurt in the plane crash near Telluride in which his son, Teddy, who was just fourteen, was killed. Mom and I were honored to be invited to the funeral. Dick had followed me as I had grown up after Athens and I had learned so much from him about what strength in the face of adversity looked like. In his eighth-grade graduation speech, Teddy had said, “The finish line is only the beginning of a whole new race.”
Watching the replays, Dick cried, too.
• • •
That half hour in that office was one of the few moments of quiet and calm in what quickly became a whirlwind.
No complaints. None at all. The opportunities that were extended to me from around the world were unbelievably thrilling. And every single one might be the one that would encourage some little boy or girl somewhere to get to the pool to start swimming for nine medals.
Bob and I had, before the Games, come to an understanding. I would be back in the pool, just not immediately. The 2009 World Championships, in Rome, weren’t until the summer; my mom had always wanted to see Rome, so I had to be back in time to try to make the team. Bob said, fine, see you in early 2009 back at the pool, back in Baltimore. He announced several months before the Olympics that he was going back to NBAC, to become chief executive officer. Starting in Rome, you might see me focus on different events: more of the sprints, for instance, maybe the 100 free, perhaps the 200 back. Both of us were excited, me to have new goals, Bob to see whether a guy more naturally suited for longer distances could make the switch. Beyond that, I fully intended to compete at the 2012 Summer Games in London, assuming I qualified for the U.S. team. My plan all along has been to be retired from swimming by the time I’m thirty; London, when I will be twenty-seven, figures to be my last go-round.
Enjoy whatever it is you’re going to do, Bob made plain before we left Beijing. He didn’t have to say the rest—make good decisions.
From Beijing, it was off to London, where I took part in the ceremony that marked the end of the Games and the handover from the 2008 to 2012 Summer Olympics. In Orlando, I rode in a convertible down Main Street at Disney World with Mickey Mouse. In Chicago, more than 150 of us from the 2008 U.S. Olympic team got to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show; I also was privileged to add my support to Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
In Los Angeles, I got to be a presenter at MTV’s Video Music Awards and a guest on shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In New York, I rang the bell, along with Lochte and Natalie Coughlin, at the New York Stock Exchange and hosted Saturday Night Live. On SNL, I got to joke that being on the show was “like, the ninth greatest moment of my life.” In the audience that night was Bruce Springsteen; at a concert a couple weeks before in St. Louis he had, before launching into “Thunder Road,” given me a shoutout: “Eight golds, man—whoo!” The SNL musical guest—the one and only Lil Wayne, whose music had gotten me in the mood before getting on the blocks in Beijing—he gave me a signed iPod that held forty unreleased tracks, one of them called “Michael Phelps,” about me. I hardly knew what to say besides—thank you.
Everywhere I went I was flattered to have touched so many people. A driver in Cleveland told me, “You honored the entire country with your effort.” At the baggage check-in in Newark, one of the skycaps said, “Congrats, Michael—you killed it out there.”
Everywhere, it seemed, swimming had become part of the national conversation. When the Los Angeles Angels clinched the American League West title in early September, one of their outfielders, Torii Hunter, put on goggles, got down on the floor in a pool of champagne and beer, and shouted out, “I love it. I’m Michael Phelps!”
In late September, I went back to Ann Arbor for the Wisconsin-Michigan football game and had one of those experiences that gave me chills. I saw Bob for the first time since Beijing; we got to go into the Michigan locker room before the game, where
I told them to beat the Badgers. The players were all fired up and so was I, and then Bob and I walked down to the field through this long tunnel under the stadium. The Michigan band was in there, and as soon as they saw me at the top of the tunnel, they all started going nuts. As we walked toward the field, the cheers echoed in front of us and rolled out into the great bowl, and then the people outside heard what was going on, and they started applauding, and so by the time we got to the light, the entire stadium was cheering. And that was way before we were introduced, when we got another thunderous ovation.
In Baltimore the next weekend, the city formally welcomed me home with both a parade, which also honored Katie Hoff, as well as Paralympic athletes and Special Olympians, and then a fireworks show at Fort McHenry, birthplace of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
All of it was amazing. It sometimes seemed surreal, especially because I never set out to be a celebrity. I set out to be the best I could be and then to do something no one else had ever done, and as we zipped from one city to the next, it was never far from my mind that, for sure in my case, celebrity comes with a certain responsibility. I was privileged enough that people wanted to hear me and see me. What was it I could tell them?
The answer, in part, came with the establishment of a foundation we set up immediately after the Games that bears my name with the aim to get kids into swimming and to help teach healthier lifestyles. I donated the entire $1 million Speedo bonus. Then Speedo and its North American licensee, The Warnaco Group, Inc., announced another $200,000 donation, and Kellogg’s, which put my picture on boxes of Frosted Flakes and other products, donated another $250,000. One of the foundation’s first initiatives: visits to a number of cities to launch an educational program that helps kids achieve their goals. The program is based on what my mom and Bob, in particular, helped me learn when I was younger: to set goals, take responsibility, and practice discipline.
Maybe we’re onto something. By the fall, USA Swimming announced that record numbers of kids were signing up at local clubs. In Mount Laurel, New Jersey, enrollment in the learn-to-swim program doubled; in Chicago, the Lyons Swim Club saw a 28 percent increase in their team size from the beginning of August through the end of September; in Farmington, New Mexico, the Four Corners Aquatic team grew by 40 percent; in Sarasota, Florida, the YMCA Sharks added 135 new members, a 36 percent increase.
Through all the glitz and the glitter after the Games, some of my best memories will always be the quieter moments, especially those I was lucky enough to spend with kids, particularly at Boys & Girls Clubs across the country. In Burbank, California, at the Boys & Girls Club, a seven-year-old named Javier Silva gave me a handmade leather bracelet; he had put eight little gold rings on it. He told me that he had watched me swim a lot at the Olympics and that he was my number-one fan. I told him I would wear it; I was true to my word. A few days later, at the Dunlevy Milbank Community Center in Harlem, I watched a group of about two dozen boys and girls swim laps. Never, I said, let anyone tell you that anything is impossible. “There were people who said no way anyone could win eight medals,” I said. “When people say that, I want to prove them wrong. I was able to prove them wrong this year. And one of the best things about the most exciting time in my life was looking up and seeing my mom there.”
All over the country—really, the world—people have gravitated toward my mom. As many people, maybe more, have come up to say, “We love your mom,” as have said, “Congratulations.” At the close of Saturday Night Live, the female cast members kept saying, we love your mom—she’s awesome!
She is awesome.
In early October, President Bush welcomed more than five hundred members of the 2008 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams to the White House. We gathered on the South Lawn and, as part of his remarks, the president said, “People say, did you ever get to meet Michael Phelps? I said I did. So that was the highlight? I said, not really. Meeting his mother was more of a highlight. She reminded me of my mother—plain-spoken and full of love.”
Everywhere my mom went after the Olympics, people would stop her and say, “Hey, Debbie,” hundreds, maybe thousands, of people she had never before met calling her by her first name as if they were old friends. People wanted just a moment with my mom—to say thank you, to say wow, to say what a great family we are. Mom had people tell her that the love she had for me and my sisters, and all of us for her, was something that America needed, that it was evidence of American values at their best. Mom had people stop her at the store and say, “Debbie, outstanding job—we are so proud of you and your son.”
Mom also starred in one of the best stories that came out of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Mom likes to shop at a clothing store named Chico’s. After she got back from Beijing, she went to her favorite Chico’s and, after some parking difficulties, was approached by a security guard in the parking lot. He started talking to her. Then a flash of recognition lit his face.
“Hey,” he said, “I know you. You—you’re the seven-medal mama.”
Mom didn’t miss a beat. She said, “Eight.”
The little boy who would grow to become the greatest gold medalist in Olympic history turns three with a backyard birthday party.
What a future Olympic gold medalist looks like on his first day of kindergarten: Michael boarding the school bus under the watch of big sister Whitney.
Michael at eight with Hilary (left) and Whitney, the sisters in Christmas pajamas, a Phelps family tradition.
Back problems kept Whitney (left) from achieving her Olympic goals, adding incentive for a teenage Michael to carry forward the family dream.
Michael at fifteen warming up before the 200 fly at the 2000 U.S. Trials, the meet that would send him to his first Summer Olympics.
At the 2001 world championships, sixteen-year-old Michael (right) takes gold in the 200 fly; Tom Malchow, Olympic champion only the year before in Sydney, claims silver.
Michael taking off at the Pan Pacific swim championships in 2006 in the 200 backstroke, an event he hasn’t tried to race at the Olympics—yet.
Michael not only wins this 200 fly in Texas in 2001 but, timed in 1:54.92, makes swim history as the youngest world-record holder—fifteen years, nine months.
Not just great theater, but a gesture of genuine solidarity and support at the 2004 Olympic Trials from the one and only Mark Spitz (left), winner of seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Games.
A beaming Michael just a few minutes after out-touching Ian Crocker by four-hundredths of a second to win gold in the 100 butterfly at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
What could be more all-American? After the 2008 Olympics, Michael appears on special boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes.
They’re off in the race that rocked the 2007 worlds in Melbourne. Michael, fifth from bottom, is en route to a stunning 1:43.86 in the 200 free, breaking Ian Thorpe’s world record by two-tenths of a second.
Seeing clearly in the prelims of the 100 fly in Beijing—in goggles borrowed from teammate Ricky Berens—after a nearly disastrous goggles malfunction the day before in the 200 fly final.
Anchored by coach Bob Bowman (center) the high-performance Club Wolverine training crew—Michael at the far right—a few months before the Beijing Games.
Michael tuning in before turning it on in the 200 individual medley final in Beijing, his sixth gold. His 2008 Games iPod favorites: Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy.
The beauty and grace of swimming at its highest levels as so elegantly revealed underwater: Michael (center) in the heats of the 200 fly at the Water Cube in Beijing.
His butterfly a study in power and fluidity, Michael helps lift the United States to a gold medal and a world record in the medley relay at the 2008 Olympics.
A furious comeback capped by a chopped half-stroke at the wall leads to elation in the 100 butterfly in Beijing: victory for Michael by one-hundredth of a second, his seventh 2008 Games gold.
The defining image of victory in Beijing: Garrett Weber-Gale (left
) and Michael as the United States, with Jason Lezak anchoring, defeats the French in the 400 freestyle relay.
Tearfully, joyfully amazed in the stands: mom Debbie Phelps (left) and oldest sister Hilary after Michael wins his eighth gold medal in Beijing.
Huddling up on deck after the stirring 400 free relay victory in Beijing: Garrett Weber-Gale, Jason Lezak, Michael, Cullen Jones.
Michael, enveloped by clamoring photographers, finds his mother and sisters after his final race, the medley relay, at the 2008 Beijing Games.
Honoring America in victory: teammates Brendan Hansen (left) and Jason Lezak (right) flanking Michael after the 2008 Beijing Games medley relay.
Stillness before the storm: The scene inside the Water Cube, Beijing’s Olympic swimming and diving venue, before competition at the 2008 Games gets underway.
Eight gold medals, fifth Sports Illustrated cover shot—what SI jinx?
A loving son and brother: Michael shares a quiet moment backstage in Beijing with his mom, Debbie, and sisters Whitney (left) and Hilary.
No Limits Page 22