Phelps embraces role as advocate
Michael Phelps has big plans for the pool.
That doesn’t mean what you think. Despite enjoying “messing around” with his Instagram posts, the most-decorated Olympian of all time is happily retired and plans to stay that way. Because what he’s doing now is far bigger.
“If I can save a child’s life or save a human being ’s life, I think that’s a lot more powerful than me coming back and swimming one more Olympics for our country,” Phelps told USA TODAY Sports on Saturday morning before appearing at a pool safety event as part of his partnerships with the Boys & Girls Club and Special Olympics.
“As hard as it is to say I won’t have the chance to stand on the medal podium with a medal around my neck ... because I love representing my country, I think what we’re doing, what I’m doing now, is way more powerful.”
Those are not empty words, given his 23 gold medals. But he is a different man than he was 21⁄ years ago, finding peace with2 in himself through rehab, marriage and fatherhood.
Once shy and uncomfortable in the spotlight, he wholeheartedly embraces being an advocate, for water safety, anti-doping and mental health. Take his appearance Saturday for the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s “Pool Safely” program.
Phelps got his start in the pool because his mom, Debbie, put him and his sisters in water safety lessons. He can’t imagine not being comfortable around a pool or water, and he and wife Nicole have already started their 1-yearold, Boomer, in lessons.
But he knows that isn’t the case for every child. Though the number of children under the age of 5 who die by drowning has dropped 17% since Pool Safely began seven years ago, 350 children still drown each year.
Another 6,000 will wind up in the emergency room because of water-related injuries.
“When you hear a stat that drowning for children under the age of 14 is the second-highest cause of death, that says to me that something needs to be done,” Phelps said.
By joining Pool Safely, Phelps knows it will give the campaign’s profile a boost. The Michael Phelps Foundation also has partnered with the Boys & Girls Club and Special Olympics on the “Im Program” since 2010, teaching more than 16,000 kids to swim.
Watching Phelps give swim lessons to first a group of kids and then Special Olympians, it’s clear he’s in his element. Despite getting only a few hours of sleep the night before thanks to a restless Boomer, he smiles and laughs throughout the 90-minute clinic. He jokes with the kids as they work on blowing bubbles and perfecting their strokes. He is, Phelps will say later, in his comfort zone.
As she watches him talk to kids about water safety, his mom said advocacy has become his comfort zone, too.
“The thing with Michael is, he was so focused on his competition and his performance,” Debbie Phelps said. “I really don’t feel his personality was able to shine through.”
Phelps acknowledges that he didn’t really let it, burying his emotions and compartmentalizing his life to the point of self-destruction. A DUI arrest in 2014 and the trip to rehab that followed forced him to confront his feelings, and he realized that shutting people out had only caused him harm.
“There are other people in the world who go through the exact same things that I go through, and maybe they don’t want to talk about it. Or maybe they’re embarrassed to talk about it,” he said. “For me, it’s a part of my life and it’s made me who I am today. ...
“Look, I will never downplay the accomplishments that I had. And for me finally being able to realize a little bit of what I did (at the Olympics), it’s so much smaller than to be able to save a child’s life in the water or to help that person not take that next step into something they could never turn back from.”
Phelps has won many big races in his career. None compares, though, to his place in the human race.