Michael Phelps

Michael Fred Phelps (born June 30, 1985) is an American swimmer, frequently cited as the greatest swimmer and one of the greatest Olympians of all time. He has won 14 career Olympic gold medals, the most by any Olympian. As of August 2, 2009, Phelps has broken thirty-seven world records in swimming.

Phelps holds the record for the most gold medals won in single Olympics, his eight at the 2008 Beijing Games surpassed American swimmer Mark Spitz's seven-gold performance at Munich in 1972.
Overall, Phelps has won 16 Olympic medals: six gold and two bronze at Athens in 2004, and eight gold at Beijing in 2008. In doing so he has twice equaled the record eight medals of any type at a single Olympics achieved by Soviet gymnast Alexander Dityatin at the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. His five golds in individual events tied the single Games record set by Eric Heiden in the 1980 Winter Olympics and equaled by Vitaly Scherbo at the 1992 Summer Games. Phelps career Olympic medal total is second only to the 18 Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina won over three Olympics, including nine gold.

Phelps's international titles and record breaking performances have earned him the World Swimmer of the Year Award in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008 and American Swimmer of the Year Award in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008. He has won a total of fifty-four career medals thus far in major international competition, forty-five gold, seven silver, and two bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, and the Pan Pacific Championships. His unprecedented Olympic success in 2008 earned Phelps Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year award.

Personal life
Phelps was born and raised in the Lake Point area of Baltimore County, Maryland. He graduated from Towson High School in 2003. His father, Fred Phelps, worked for the Maryland State Police and his mother, Deborah Sue "Debbie" Davisson Phelps, is a middle school principal. The two divorced in 1994. Michael, whose nickname is "MP", has two older sisters, Whitney and Hilary. Both of them were swimmers as well, with Whitney coming close to making the U.S. national team for the 1996 Summer Olympics before injuries derailed her career.

In his youth, Phelps was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He started swimming at age seven, partly because of the influence of his sisters and partly to provide him with an outlet for his energy. He excelled as a swimmer, and by the age of 10 held a national record for his age group. More age group records followed, and Phelps's rapid improvement culminated in his qualifying for the 2000 Summer Olympics at the age of 15.
In November 2004, at the age of 19, Phelps was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in Salisbury, Maryland. He pleaded guilty to driving while impaired the following month and was granted probation before judgment and ordered to serve 18 months' probation, fined $250, obligated to speak to high school students about drinking and driving and had to attend a Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) meeting. Questioned about the incident later that month by Matt Lauer on the Today Show, Phelps said it was an "isolated incident" and that he had "definitely let myself down and my family down ... I think I let a lot of people in the country down."

Between 2004 and 2008, Phelps attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, studying sports marketing and management. In May 2008, Phelps announced his intention to return to Baltimore following the 2008 Olympics, joining Bob Bowman there after leaving the University of Michigan, saying, "I'm not going to swim for anybody else. I think we can both help the North Baltimore Aquatic Club go further. I'm definitely going to be in Baltimore next year." Bowman left the University of Michigan to become the club's CEO. Phelps purchased a house in the Fells Point section of Baltimore, where he has resided since the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Phelps' teammates at the Olympics called him "Gomer" because he reminded them of Gomer Pyle, the good-natured, naïve country boy played by Jim Nabors on The Andy Griffith Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C..

He has made an estimated $5 million per year in endorsements, including an estimated $1 million dollars to be the face of Mazda in China. After receiving a $1 million bonus from swimsuit maker Speedo for winning at least seven gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games, Phelps used the money to create the Michael Phelps Foundation, a charity foundation to promote water safety and to advocate swimming for children. Speedo then donated an additional $200,000 to the Foundation.

On December 1, 2008, TV Guide reported Phelps' selection as one of America’s top ten most fascinating people of 2008 for a Barbara Walters ABC television program that aired on December 4, 2008.

In early 2009, Phelps admitted to "behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment" following the publication of a photo by the British tabloid, News of the World, showing him using a bong, a device used for smoking marijuana. Following an investigation, the Richland County Sheriff's Department announced on February 16 that Phelps would not be prosecuted in connection with the incident because there was not enough evidence. USA Swimming suspended Phelps from swimming competitively for three months, and Kellogg's announced that it would not renew his endorsement contract.

On April 9, 2009 Phelps was invited to appear before the Maryland House of Delegates and the Maryland Senate, to be honored for his Olympic accomplishments. When introduced, he received standing ovations by lawmakers in both chambers.
Physique and training

A few physical attributes particularly suit Phelps to swimming: his long, thin torso offers low drag; his arms span 6 feet 7 inches (201 cm)—disproportionate to his height of 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm)—and act as long, propulsive "paddles"; his relatively short legs lower drag, and perhaps add the speed enhancement of a hydrofoil; his size 14 feet provide the effect of flippers; and his hypermobile ankles he can extend beyond the pointe of a ballet dancer, enabling him to whip his feet as if they were fins for maximum thrust through the water.

In October 2007, Phelps slipped on a patch of ice and fell while climbing into a friend's car in Michigan, breaking his right wrist. Coach Bowman recalled that Phelps was in despair over the injury. For a few weeks after the surgery, he was confined to kicking in the pool with a kickboard while his teammates swam. However, this allowed Phelps to strengthen his legs, which might have allowed him to edge out Milorad Cavic in the 100 butterfly final for his seventh gold medal at the 2008 Olympics. In the last five meters, an exhausted Cavic was dragging his legs while Phelps used a strong kick to get his hands to the wall first, by a hundredth of a second.

In a front page illustrated article profiling Phelps on the eve of the 2008 Summer Olympics, The Baltimore Sun described the hometown swimmer as "a solitary man" with a "rigid focus" at the pool prior to a race, but afterwards "a man incredibly invested in the success of the people he cares about". Bowman told a Sun interviewer, "He's unbelievably kind-hearted", recounting Phelps's interaction with young children after practices.

According to an article in The Guardian, Phelps eats around 12,000 kcal each day, or about six times the intake of a normal adult male. Yet according to Michael Phelps in an interview with 60 Minutes, the estimate given by the Guardian is "not true"; he stated that he eats 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day when training.

Throughout the 2008 Olympics, Phelps was questioned by the press if perhaps his feats were "too good to be true", a reference to unsupported rumors that Phelps may be taking performance enhancing drugs. In response, Phelps noted that he had signed up for Project Believe, a project by the United States Anti-Doping Agency in which U.S. Olympians can volunteer to be tested in excess of the World Anti-Doping Agency guidelines. During the Games, Phelps was tested nine times, and passed all of them.

Phelps idolized Australian Ian Thorpe as a teenager, modelling his public image after Thorpe, and later watched videos to try to emulate the Aussie's famous six-beat underwater dolphin kick off the turns. Phelps, who finished third behind Thorpe in the 200 m freestyle at the 2004 Athens Olympics, had unsuccessfully tried to lure the Australian out of retirement in 2007, saying he would "like to race" Thorpe. Thorpe initially said it was highly unlikely for Phelps to win eight gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. His remarks were used by Phelps, who stuck them on his locker as motivation during the Games. This was related by Phelps in an interview w/ Matt Lauer Thorpe was in the stands for the men's 4×100 meter medley relay, where Phelps was swimming for his eighth Olympic title. When Phelps and his teammates captured the gold, Thorpe gave a congratulatory kiss to Phelps' mother, then gave a handshake and a hug to congratulate Phelps. Thorpe afterwards said "I'm really proud of him not just because he won eight golds. Rather, it's how much he has grown up and matured into a great human being. Never in my life have I been so happy to have been proved wrong. I enjoyed every moment of it."