RIO DE JANEIRO— Michael Phelps belongs to that separate species of all-time greats, and they’re the most discontented people on earth, restive and incapable of leaving their energy unspent. You saw his face when he was taunted, and you saw him leap through the water like a marlin to get to the wall. If Phelps thinks he has even an eighth of a tank left in that long body, we will see him in four years in Tokyo. You can be sure of it.
“The itches,” was how Michael Jordan once described the urge to compete. What if Phelps decides he hasn’t yet touched the bottom of his talent yet? Picture him in a swim cap and trunks four years from now, threshing through the water at the age of 35 trying to make the next young things, the Joseph Schoolings, feel his splash in a sixth Summer Games. He swears it won’t happen, but he’s sworn he was done before and it turned out he was just bored.
Thatap why his teammates on the USA swimming team, from Ryan Lochte to Katie Ledecky, don’t take him at his word when he says, “I’m ready to retire.”
“Last time was his last, this time was his last, and I get to say I was on the same team twice when he retired,” Ledecky said teasingly Saturday afternoon, shortly before Phelps made his final relay swim at the Rio Games. “Maybe there will be a third time. All records are made to be broken.”
Lochte even went so far as to tell NBC that he “guaranteed” Phelps would appear in a sixth Olympics. Lochte, who has been rooming with Phelps, has been saying throughout these Games that he has a “weird feeling” that these aren’t Phelps’ last races.
“He said he was going to retire after 2012 and I was the only person who said he was going to come back again,” Lochte said.
About halfway through 2012,
in the buildup to the London Games, I visited Phelps at his aquatic club in Baltimore. It was obvious swimming was a job, an unwanted obligation. I asked him about the monotony, and he answered shortly, “Brutal. I have 170 more days of this.”
Then he added: “I think the hardest thing to do, the hardest time to do something, is when you’re tired,” he said. “When you’re tired, itap just sort of easy to fall apart, and not care and kind of just give up.”
Even so, he won four more gold medals in London. The not caring and the giving up came after: 18 months of playing golf and going to Ravens games, followed by deep depression and rehab. Phelps discovered what a lot of high-functioning retirees do: that too much leisure time can come with a sense of rot.
The results of personal healing and sobriety are obvious: The Phelps who came to Rio is a far more buoyant person, and swimmer. Itap not just a matter of his personal happiness, as father to infant son Boomer and soon-to-be-husband to Nicole Johnson. Phelps has discovered that he can swim without his old grim concentrated defenses, and binges. This time around, he reached out to his fellow swimmers, especially younger Americans, and engaged with them in the athletes village.
“Before, I would really have my headphones on and not really talk to anybody. I’m much more open and relaxed now,” he said last week. He found out he could actually enjoy the Olympic experience, and even laugh about it.
“It wasn’t like a fake laugh or this or that,” he said. “I was actually enjoying myself, and we were telling jokes with one another. Thatap what I didn’t have in 2012. That was nowhere to be found.”
Phelps had never been looser or more explosive in the water than in Rio.
“He came back with more purpose,” Lochte observed.
Which is why itap so tantalizing to imagine him still swimming in four years. If Phelps genuinely believes that he has no more of these efforts in him, that he wants to turn his energy and attention now to his family, then he is right to retire. But Ervin believes that Phelps can still be viable in four years – and more importantly, that his titanic presence could be valuable to younger swimmers in mid-grind. Phelps “lifted” the entire American performance here, Ervin says. Everyone needs something to work for, and toward – a purpose. Maybe Phelps will find a new one as a mentor.
“The guy’s still so good and he could offer so much,” Ervin said.
