Phelps' Epic Return

As a former collegiate swimmer, Michael Phelps has been a hero of mine for a long time.  While I don’t necessarily enjoy his personality out of the pool (I’ve gotten the chance to meet him a few times), there’s no doubt that he’s an absolute stud in the water.  For those of you who haven’t heard, Phelps ‘unretired’ last week and is swimming in a grand prix meet in Arizona that commences tomorrow. 

            His coach, Bob Bowman, doesn’t necessarily have any high expectations, but says that Phelps is certainly in good enough shape to “not get embarrassed at all.”  Phelps will begin the meet tomorrow with the 100 meter freestyle and 100 meter butterfly.  Even if he makes it to the finals in both events, he’s only going to choose one and scratch the other (according to Bowman).  The meet sold out hours after the news broke about Phelps returning to competition, and all swim fans are anxiously awaiting to see what the best Olympic athlete in history has in store.

            Many are currently debating whether or not Phelps would even be able to qualify for the Olympics in 2016.  He’ll be 31 by that point in time and the average age of Olympic male swimmers is 21.4.  I find it rather amusing that everyone doubts Phelps based on stats, as he’s proven for his entire career that he can break any statistic that he wants to.  I personally think he could swim even better after taking a year and a half off of training than he did in London in 2012. 

            Phelps will be the first to say that he wasn’t very focused leading up to the 2012 games.  He was worn out from all the training and wasn’t necessarily enjoying it anymore.  Now, he’s ‘retired’, taken time to golf, travel, live life outside of the pool, and has realized that he misses being in the water.  This level of comfort might get him into a better mental state leading into training and events, which is proven to help swimmers perform at a higher level.  Either way, this weekend will be a good indicator of how much Phelps truly wants to compete. 

            If he gets destroyed, will he come out and say that he’s done competing and that he just wants to stay in shape?  Or will he use it as fuel to train harder and come back even stronger at the next meet?  What if he wins a bunch of events this weekend? Nobody can accurately guess what’s going to happen so we’ll all have to wait and see.

            As a last “pump-up” for his return, I’ve included two of my favorite races by Phelps.  The first is the 100 fly from Beijing in 2008, and the second is the 100 fly from the World championships in 2009.  The swimmer Phelps out-touched in ’08 started talking trash constantly about destroying Phelps in ’09, so watch and enjoy.

  

Works Cited

Metcalfe, Jeff. It's not only about Michael Phelps at Arizona swim meet. 22 April 2014. 23 April 2014 <http://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/2014/04/22/phelps-arena-grand-prix-swim-meet/8036311/>.