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Michael Phelps’ Greatest Conquest

Michael Phelps’ Greatest Conquest

Last updated on: August 18, 2016 at 3:40 pm by Tod Worner

Michael Phelps’ Greatest Conquest 2016-08-18T15:40:18-06:00 Tod Worner

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Oh, you saw it.

Didn’t you?

Look here and let me refresh your memory.

Sitting in the corner of the “Ready Room” in Rio’s swimming center, a hooded Michael Phelps focused intently on the 200-meter butterfly semifinal awaiting him. With headphones fixed and jaw tight, Phelps envisioned the race as he stared ahead into the lanes of water occupying his mind’s eye. That is, until South African swimmer, Chad Le Clos walked in. With a cocky swagger and an impertinent grin, Le Clos capped years of trash-talking Michael Phelps’ skills with a brash shadow-box routine in front of the concentrating Olympic champion. He strutted. He smirked. He was a complete ass. At the very least, Le Clos’ behavior was unthinking insolence, but to most reasonable observers, it was a flagrant affront to Michael Phelps.

And that’s when it came.

The Michael Phelps Face.

By now, the picture has become a sensational viral internet meme with variations as diverse as lasers shooting from Phelps’ eyes to Phelps’ angry visage likened to the hooded Sith Lord, Darth Maul. It was mean, angry, determined, convicted…like watching a fuse about to reach the unforgiving combustible.

But that was it.

Michael Phelps said nothing.

But before long, he stood up, took his place at the starters’ block and quite simply kicked the living daylights out of that South African swimmer… uh, what was his name again? Well, no matter. He will forever be known as the guy who trash-talked the greatest Olympian in history and ended up with egg on his face and no medal on his chest. It was a delicious conquest.

Oh, that felt good. The cocky guy laid low. The high road swimmer proving it in the pool. To my eyes, this was a twenty-first century Western taking place at high noon in Rio de Janeiro. As the villain’s gun is drawn, the hero has already pumped uncountable fragments of lead into him…and was cooly blowing smoke from the barrel. Clint Eastwood would be proud.

But this isn’t the Michael Phelps story we should be focusing on.

Both Sports Illustrated’s Tim Layden (cover above) and ESPN Magazine’s Wayne Drehs produced extraordinary pieces on the rise and fall and rise of Michael Phelps. A precocious young boy from a broken home, a prodigious swimmer with a checkered record of discipline, a son in search of a father, and a boyfriend too uncertain to commit. Success and uncertainty, glory and shame, fanfare and isolation, confidence and fear collectively swirled and spiraled into a series of DUIs, suspension from his livelihood and despair leading to the brink of suicide.

Until.

Until family, a coach, an agent and a professional football player intervened. And Michael Phelps went to rehab. Thus, humiliated, chastened and literally leaving a barrage of banged-up relationships in his wake, Phelps checked into the residential treatment center, The Meadows, to salvage what he believed was a lost cause.

It was here that the greatest athlete the Olympics has ever seen found peace. Through quiet. Through reading Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life. Through therapy. Through volleyball and televised football games with society’s addicts and outcasts. It was here that Michael found peace…and the ability to rebuild. One moment, one act, one relationship at a time.

He reached out to a father he felt abandoned by and started first halting steps toward a relationship. He redoubled his commitment to his girlfriend and future fiancé. He made amends with his devoted, yet wounded family. And he proved his discipline and steadfastness to his long-suffering coach. As a matter of fact, Bob Bowman, his coach who had to endure and rebut the tirades, capriciousness and indiscipline of his star student observed a transformation he never quite expected from Michael coming out of rehab,

“I’m the most skeptical person ever. I don’t believe any of that ‘He’ll never change, he’s always going to be that way.’ But he was completely different in a way I never imagined. He was honest, engaged. I left there that day thinking maybe there’s a chance this would help him.”

It did.

In a world where young athletes, young celebrities, young prodigies burn bright and then brilliantly flame out while the world smugly tut-tuts, “I told you so,” Michael Phelps is the exception. His flame flickered, was even nearly snuffed out, but now burns brighter than ever. No, it’s not because of his ever-rising medal count or the Phelps Face portending a delicious smack-down of a cocky competitor.

No.

Here is what burns so bright: It’s the look in his eyes when his gangly body leans down to kiss his baby boy. It’s the commitment he’s kept to remaining sober one day at a time. It’s the enthusiasm he has for his upcoming marriage or his post-Olympics vocation. It’s the willingness to walk forward with his wounds instead of not walking at all. It’s the joy of swimming and the honor of bearing the nation’s flag at opening ceremonies or on his swim cap. It’s that tinge of humility, that ease of maturity that emerges (notwithstanding a boyish bravado) once a race is concluded. It’s being present in the moment, being intentional, simply…being.

Oh, to be sure, The Michael Phelps Face was surely about delivering a delicious defeat to an uncouth rival. You’ll never get that competitive edge out of him. That’s deep in his fabric.

But, ultimately, that wasn’t his greatest conquest.

Not at all.

Michael Phelps’ greatest conquest was himself.

What an extraordinary, enduring victory.

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Photo credit: Pixabay

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