RIO DE JANEIRO – Michael Phelps was walking through the Olympic Village on Wednesday morning when he spotted Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, winner of 12 Grand Slam tennis tournaments.
By his own admission Phelps had been notoriously antisocial around the village at previous Olympic Games – earphones in, plugged into a zone, no visitors allowed – that led him to a record 22 Olympic medals, 18 of them gold.
“Before I would always have my headphones on and would never talk to anybody,” he said. “That’s kind of literally how it always was.”
Maybe it was because it was Djokovic. Maybe it was because Phelps, having gone through a series of major life experiences the past two years, really is the kinder, gentler Olympic superhero he claims to be in his fifth and perhaps final Games. Or maybe it doesn’t matter.
But Wednesday morning Phelps stopped and said hello to Djokovic and, like so many of those Malaysian table tennis players and Ukrainian synchronized swimmers he’s tuned out all these years, asked for a selfie with the Serb.
“‘Oh, I want a picture,’” Phelps recalled thinking. “It’s kind of cool.”
Friday night Phelps will lead the U.S. team into the opening ceremony, the American flag bearer, for something of a victory lap for the most decorated career in Olympic history.
“The greatest Olympian of all time,” said Katie Ledecky, Phelps’ U.S. teammate and, along with gymnast Simone Biles, the poster girl for the Rio Games.
The selection by U.S. team captains of a twice-convicted drunk driver as Team USA’s standard-bearer will certainly be viewed by some as a curious and controversial move, but it will make NBC happy. Even Phelps seemed surprised when he was first told of the possibility.
“To lead our country into this Olympics is something that I honestly never thought I’d have the opportunity to do,” he said.
Then again, his participation in Rio was questionable at several junctures since he won four gold and six total medals at the 2012 Olympics in London.
Phelps said he was retiring in London only to return to the sport a year later. On Sept. 30, 2014, Phelps was arrested on suspicion of DUI after getting pulled over for going 84 mph in a 45 mph zone in the narrow Fort McHenry Tunnel beneath the Baltimore Harbor. He registered a blood alcohol level of 0.14, nearly double the legal limit in Maryland. Phelps entered The Meadows, an addiction treatment center a hour outside of Phoenix, five days later. He was suspended from all competitions for six months by USA Swimming and prohibited from competing in the 2015 World Championships.
He said he has been sober since October 2014 and he credits his treatment, in addition to the May 5 birth of his son Boomer with fiancee Nicole Johnson, with finally letting him open up to the world around him and embrace his a career that also includes 37 world records.
“The biggest change is that it’s given me a clear head in the pool, especially in the pool,” said Phelps, who also had a DUI in 2004. “It’s obviously given me a much clearer head outside the pool with my family life, my personal life. I think I’ve really been able to just enjoy life. I think that’s the easiest way of putting it.
“I’ve been able to experience things that I probably didn’t really notice or I guess I kind of took for granted in the past and this joy, this ride that I’ve been on, I’ll forever be thankful for the people who have influenced me in my life who have helped me get through some of the time where I’ve needed them and also this guy up here sticking with me and not making sure I stayed retired,” Phelps continued, gesturing to longtime coach Bob Bowman sitting next to him. “It’s honestly, this has been just the greatest two years of my life for a lot of reasons.”
His legendarily contentious relationship with Bowman, who began coaching Phelps at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club when the future gold medalist was a hyper, bratty 11-year-old, has also improved.
“I’m having fun again,” Phelps said. “I’m enjoying what I’m doing. Bob and I can still joke on the pool deck. There are so many days where it was kind of pulling hair and we’re trading blows with one another and kind of upset one another. I’m enjoying what I’m doing again and I think I’m to the point where whatever is left here I think I’ll be able to turn the page and finish my career the way I wanted to. And to me that’s all that matters.”
Phelps arrives in Rio the most transformative Olympian of his, or maybe, any generation.
“I dreamt of making the Olympic team and that happened in 2000 and it just kept getting better and better,” he said.
(Longtime rival Ryan Lochte said he believes Phelps will swim in Tokyo in 2020. “I honestly don’t think this is going to be his last Olympics,” Lochte said. “I’m saying he’s going to come back.” Phelps, for his part, hedged slightly on Wednesday. “My potential last Olympics,” he said, adding that the disclaimer was “Just so you guys don’t beat me to death if I come back.”)
Phelps not only changed the face of the Olympic Games since the 2004 Games in Athens, he has been the face of the Olympics, his record-shattering success elevating swimming to equal, if not top, billing with track and field and gymnastics on NBC’s five-ring marquee, making the chlorine-drenched first week of the Games the network’s biggest hit since “Seinfeld.”
“He’s changed the sport,” Lochte said. “He’s made swimming bigger than what it was.”
Said U.S. sprinter Nathan Adrian, the 2012 Olympic 100-meter freestyle champion: “Michael on even a broader scale has impacted the entire Olympic movement. A lot people, if you say you’re an Olympian, the first thing ask you is hey, have you met Michael Phelps?”
It’s only been in the past two years that Phelps began to appreciate his impact on the sport.
“It is finally settling in more and more that some of things that I’ve been able to accomplish in my career and wanting to change the sport, I’m seeing it first-hand,” he said. “And I think that’s something that is really rewarding, because I know how hard I’ve worked to try and get this sport to change and to be a prime-time sport and to be a major Olympic sport and to be a year-round sport in every year not just an every-four-year sport. I’m getting a little reward from the hard work, but the hard work isn’t done.”
Phelps will swim three individual events in Rio – the 100 and 200 butterfly and 200 individual medley – and likely at least two relays. He is the favorite to win another gold in the 100 fly, a victory that would make him the oldest Olympic swimming champion in history. But Phelps will have his hands full in the other two events against Laszlo Cseh of Hungary, and youngsters such as South Africa’s Chad le Clos and Japan’s Daiya Seto and Kosuke Hagino, who grew up idolizing him.
Clos upset his hero in the London 200 fly final by five-hundreths of a second.
“It’s pretty special being able to race Seto again and Chad and I getting back in the pool,” Phelps said. “We haven’t raced since ’04, ’04, I mean since ’12. Jesus, they all run together. Sorry.”
Phelps, however, insisted the 2016 Games will stand out. For one thing, Boomer will be in the crowd at the Aquatics Stadium, sporting a brand new red, white and blue wardrobe.
“Boomer will be dressed to impress in the stands, that’s for sure,” Phelps said.
But Phelps, after carrying the torch for his sport for most of the past 16 years, is also genuinely touched to be asked to bear a flag raised a record 18 times over Olympic pools in celebration of his triumphs.
“I think this time around will be a lot more emotional than past Games or any past swim meet,” he said. “So this has to be one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.”
Contact the writer: sreid@scng.com
