Maryland's own Michael Phelps

Michael Phelps is back making headlines yet again. This time it’s not for dating Carrie Prejean or ripping bingers in a South Carolina house party. Nope, Phelps is back in the pool, making ink his old fashioned way, by breaking world records. That’s just what Phelps did last week at the National Swimming Championships in Indy. Phelps broke a four-year-old Ian Crocker world record in the 100-meter butterfly. A slight neck injury would later forced Phelps out of the 100-meter freestyle heats, but all signs suggest he is ready to wreck shop at the World’s later this month.

Phelps will narrow the scope of his competition program for the World Championships in Rome, as well as, the 2012 Olympic games. Michael is focused on the 100 & 200-meter butterfly, the 100-meter freestyle, and various relay events for the 2012 games. The challenge will be minuscule compared to the one Phelps and coach Bob Bowman embarked on in the years leading up to the Beijing games, but it will certainly keep Phelps occupied. What Michael Phelps, the owner of 14 Olympic gold medals and 33 world records, has shown us is that he needs something to keep him occupied. It was on November 4, 2004, little over three months after the Athens games ended, that Phelps was cited for a DUI in Salisbury, a charged that was later plead down to probation before judgment. It was again in November, this time in 2009, when Phelps was photographed sucking on the business end of an elongated smoking device at a party.

My question to you is…can you really blame him? Here you have a phenom who has had his face buried in a chlorinated pool since he was seven. His adolescence, our best mischief years mind you, spent doing insane workouts in preparation to be the next Mark Spitz. How would you cut loose during your first break after four years of grueling training and competition? Throw in the fact that you’re 19 – 23, you’re famous, and you’re a millionaire…they’d have to make room at the Betty Ford Clinic for me, because I’d go off the deep-end. I know that Phelps brought some of this stuff on himself. Nobody held a gun to his head and asked him to pick up that bong, just like nobody forced him to spend the majority of his youth in the pool, but I guess that’s the price you have to pay for greatness.

Contrary to the early reports of what a good head Phelps has on his shoulders there are stories of him being a cocky d-bag. My take: even the best of us would be cocky given his ability and accomplishments. And as far as the yo-boy attire/persona go, I’ll let that ride considering the aforementioned circumstances. Having the media hype machine massaging his ego didn’t help the situation either.

To me the backlash was imminent. For months leading up to and after the Olympics you couldn’t turn on a TV without seeing his goofy grill. He endorsed tons of products from Speedos to wireless internet cards, and everything in between. His mother wrote a book on parenting and was on Oprah for crying out loud. This guy was America’s hero, hoisted up on a silver platter and I knew it was just a matter of time before the media would try and knock him back down. After all that’s what the American media loves to do isn’t it? They love to hype up the hero and then watch the train wreck that will inevitably follow. The American public loves sensational stories and the media loves to give them to us, contrived or not. We as American’s also love a comeback story. Now I’m not calling Phelps a train wreck, nor am I suggesting he be viewed as a comeback story; even if he wins three or four gold’s in London. All I’m saying is that we should view him for what he is – a human being who happens to be the greatest swimmer of all time, but flesh and blood nonetheless.

The Phelps story always takes on a bit more significance in Baltimore, because at age 24 he’s already one of our most heralded athletes. I have to admit to falling into Phelps-backlash mode a bit during the winter, but my contempt was minimal, because I’ll never forget his performance in the 2008 Summer Games and how much pride that it brought to me as an American. I’ll never forget the photo finish win against Milorad Cavic, which brought Phelps his seventh gold of the games. I’ll also never forget hugging friends, and strangers, at No Way Jose when Phelps and Lezak and the rest of the American 4×100-meter freestyle team beat the smack-talking Frenchies.

~ Pat Cary