2023-08-15 03:06:07
Michael Phelps, the athlete who won the most medals in the history of the Olympic Games
“I want to change the sport of swimming. I want people to talk about it, think about it and look forward to seeing it. I want them to want to jump in and do it. That is my goal”. With those words it is easy to introduce a man who wrote history. Because if there is something that is easy to explain, it is how Michael Phelps revolutionized the world. At the age of 15, he made his debut at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. And eight years later, in Beijing, he was crowned with eight Olympic gold medals.
That was 15 years ago. But before that dazzling performance, and for a while after, life for the Baltimore Shark wasn’t easy. What’s more, he suffered sufferings that made him know his own hell: addictions to drugs and alcohol led him down an elusive path. He ended up being locked in a room for five days. Alone with his damaged soul.
“There was a part of my life that I did not want to continue living,” he confessed some time ago in dialogue with CNN, during an interview in which he put his problems with depression and mental health on the table, already retired from high performance. after the Rio 2016 Games.
But to know how Phelps came to think about taking his own life, you have to understand how he became one of the greatest athletes of all time. Since childhood, Michael wanted to always be the center of attention. “He was asking 25 million questions, and if he didn’t come by on his trike, he was swinging like monkeys,” his mother Deborah told the New York Times during the 2008 Olympics success.
In preschool, the teachers complained because he didn’t keep quiet when they asked him to and, among other things, he nudged his classmates to get attention. In one of the books he wrote Beneath the Surface: My Story, the former swimmer explained that he spoke too fast and that he didn’t look people in the eye when they spoke to him. “I just couldn’t sit still, it was hard for me to focus on one thing at a time. I had to be a part of everything”, recalls Michael in one of the quotes.
Faced with this complex scenario, added to the conflicts in his home that led to the separation of his parents when he was seven years old, his mother took him to a swimming center where his other two sisters already went. “You may think that the first day I touched the water I turned into something like a dolphin and that I never wanted to get out of the pool again… No way. She hated him. I mean yelling, kicking and punching, and hating swimming goggles, ”he recalled in his book that he published in 2004, the same year that he won eight medals (six gold and two silver) at the Olympic Games. Athens.
A young Phelps during the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Photo by Adam Pretty/Getty Images)
When he was in elementary school, and after a teacher told his mother that he would never be able to concentrate on anything, Phelps was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. What is ADHD? A mental disorder comprising a combination of persistent problems (difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity, and impulsive behavior), the symptoms of which begin in early childhood and continue into adulthood.
“Once I figured out how to swim, I felt so free. I could swim fast in the pool, partly because being there calmed my mind. In the water I felt in control for the first time, ”explained the 2-meter-plus man in his first book. “My mom was delighted that I was swimming because she wanted me to expend as much energy as possible.”
The path that Phelps traveled in world swimming was marathon. At age 10 he was already considered a national level athlete and five years later he competed in the biggest event for an athlete. But it was in 2008 when his figure became world famous after hanging the eight gold medals for winning the 200 and 400 combined meters; 100 and 200 meter butterfly; 200 free meters; 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relay; 4x100m medley relay and the 200-meter freestyle with absolute world record times.
These conquests allowed him to beat the historic mark held by another great swimmer from the United States like Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in swimming in Munich 1972. “Records were invented to be broken,” Phelps emboldened himself after breaking a record that was more than three decades old.
But it was not until after London 2012, where he hung six dams, four of them gold and two silver, that he suffered a serious health problem. “I didn’t want to swim anymore, I didn’t even want to live anymore… So we thought about suicide,” he confessed in 2018 during a press conference that he paralyzed the world of sports. “I think you have to understand that it is okay not to be okay. There was a part of me that no longer wanted to live, ”he confessed about the problems that he went through and led him to consume alcohol excessively.
As happened in other cases, American society lowered one of the idols of the 21st century from the pedestal. A photo smoking cannabis in a pipe went viral and fans reproached him for his attitude without even knowing what he went through after becoming a sports hero for adults, youth and children, and a commercial boom for countless brands that chose him as a role model athlete.
The Baltimore Shark, as he was nicknamed, achieved a record 8 gold medals 15 years ago in China (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
A swimmer who was present in the city of China a decade and a half ago and shared the pool of the Water Cube, the aquatic center of the Olympic Games in Beijing, spoke with Infobae. “It’s like being next to Messi. Watching him swim before the event at the US Open was magical. To see it was to see a dolphin swim,” Agustina De Giovanni confessed to this outlet. The Argentine athlete was part of the delegation in the largest multidisciplinary event in the sports world.
“Watching the process and seeing him achieve everything he set out to do was incredible. Let’s keep in mind that, as he himself confessed, he spent three years in a row swimming 365 days a year. In other words, he did not even stop for a day to rest in his training, ”said the swimmer from Santa Fe. De Giovanni also performed at the 2004 Athens Olympics, the first with multiple medals for Phelps.
After retiring from high-performance swimming, Argentina became one of the world leaders in how athletes should exercise their mentality in order to boost their performance and improve their quality of life. She’s worked with the All Blacks, she’s worked with soccer players and athletes of all kinds, and she’s also created her “brain gym” for MLS team DC United.
“Not only did he say ‘this is happening to me’, but in the second stage he involved the woman and told what it is like to live with someone who is still going through depression, and that he explained to people his relationship with the family and how you tell your kids that you may not be having a good day. In other words, he normalized a taboo subject in the world of sports and in society, ”Agustina analyzed his message related to mental health.
“I was in the US when the famous photo in which I was consuming was released. They were very cruel to him because of his success. What Phelps did was put a name to the problem. He came out to speak, he is the president of a foundation that helps people who have mental problems. He put him in a place of light, he gave visibility and understanding to a situation that thousands of people are experiencing and, in turn, the athletes”, added the specialist in the mental training of athletes.
Precisely, the man who won 27 world titles and achieved 39 world records in the water highlighted the value of his wife Nicole, former model and Miss California, in his growth to improve his mental health. “It is my everything, my rock. I definitely wouldn’t be who I am without her. She was someone who really helped me in my darkest time, ”he revealed in the note with CNN from five years ago, two after his retirement from professional swimming.
“I live life one day at a time,” remarked Phelps, who is currently also part of the NBC network as a commentator on the big events of his sport, be it World Cups, the Olympic Games or at the time of the famous trials of swimming in your country.
In his healing process, for which he fights “day by day”, Michael does not miss the opportunity to talk about mental health every time he has a microphone or is a special guest at an event. “I would like to be able to save a life, if I can. For me that is more important than winning a gold medal,” said someone who was of immeasurable help in analyzing a subject that was lived with an open heart during the last edition of the Olympic Games thanks to another legend of American sports like Simone Billes.
“What Phelps’ decision to speak about what he’s been through in his career meant was telling the truth. In other words, he opened a new chapter in the world of sports. He already had his chapter in the book for everything he achieved in swimming, but he was able to start a new paragraph related to the mental damage caused by swimming eight hours a day for 20 years”, concluded Agustina De Giovanni about the impact that had the greatest swimmer of all time.
Phelps won 28 Olympic medals in his career (Archyde.com)
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