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'I have no regrets for the past is behind me'
Michael Phelps is where you assume he is, where you're accustomed to seeing him: Under water, shimming his lengthy 6-foot-4 body like the master aquatic contortionist he's always been.
Phelps said in a statement nearly two years ago">Under Armour posted a video to social media on March 8 of the most-decorated, most-scrutinized and most-revered Olympian in history. The video is one minute and 31 seconds and is entitled "Rule Yourself." It's fittingly accompanied by an emotionally-charged song from the band The Kills called "The Last Goodbye."
The clip covers — either directly or indirectly — the past four years of Phelps' personal struggles out of the water and his falling out of love with the sport that made him, to many, an immortal athlete whose 18 career Olympic gold medals will remain a record forever untouched. At the heart of it, the montage portrays everything that Phelps has spoken of in the past few months leading to his fifth and final Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro.
Somewhere before the 2012 Olympics in London and the four more gold medals that would follow, Phelps was ready to move on and retire. He wanted nothing to do with the sport. "I was finished," he told reporters earlier this year from his seat on the floor of the Pauley Pavilion on UCLA's campus for his own portion of the 2016 Olympic Media Summit.
He was over swimming. He didn't want to train anymore. Going into London was "like pulling teeth." Disinterested, Phelps could barely get into a pool. The world's top Olympian might've added to his tally of gold medals, but it was time for him to move on, he said, speaking firmly in past tense.
Then, in September of 2014, Phelps was arrested on charges of driving under the influence in his hometown of Baltimore after cutting short his brief attempt at retirement.
"I know these words may not mean much right now but I am deeply sorry to everyone I have let down," Phelps said in a statement nearly two years ago.
Soon after, he checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic in Arizona. He spent a reported 45 days there.
'Can't quite see the end'
The video of Phelps continues by showing him freezing in a cold tub, then downing a hefty meal — two plates filled to the brim, to be exact. He's shown resting in a hyperbaric recovery chamber. He's shown staring at a pool filled with leaves, alluding to wrestling whether or not to return.
Prior to that DUI arrest in 2014, Phelps — then 30 pounds overweight — said he randomly decided to jump into a pool. "Maybe I'll splash around and see what happens," he thought to himself.
Something clicked. He enjoyed being back in the water.
"What the hell? Might as well do it again," he said.
The what-if scenario kept resurrecting. Phelps didn't want to look back on London as his last Olympics. His road to Rio was driven by, among other things, doing it the right way with longtime coach Bob Bowman. Before London, he was trying to "fake it." Before Brazil, it wouldn't be that way.
"I wanted to do it the way I should've done it in 2012," Phelps said. "I wanted to prepare for an Olympic Games the way I should have."
This round of preparation is more in line that for the 2004 and 2008 Games, where Phelps reached superstardom. He spent about 30 hours a week in the pool and the gym leading to the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Omaha, Neb., in late June.
Beyond the water, life is different for the 22-time Olympic medalist. In early May, three weeks before planned, Phelps became a first-time father. He and fiancee Nicole Johnson welcomed son Boomer Robert Phelps.
"Our first-born has the chance to see my last race ever," he said. "I think that's something that will be really special, that we'll be able to share stories with him when he gets old enough to realize."
'It's the last goodbye, I swear'
Phelps drifts underwater as a shadow in a dark pool. The workouts that seemed rigorous earlier in the video became easier. Kicks are faster. Pull-ups more automatic. The camera finally zooms out of a swim lane spotlighted with Phelps taking laps by himself. In the end, he's shown standing tall, but shivering.
This is Phelps' last goodbye. There will be no repeat of 2012, he said. The Olympic Trials in Omaha were his last races on American soil. The 200-meter butterfly, 100-meter butterfly and 200-meter IM and will be among the final races for this legend of Olympics.
In the 16 years since his Olympic debut in Sydney, Phelps has screamed triumphantly upon the mountain top of his sport and been forced to climb back up.
"It's good for the sport. It's making it bigger, him coming back," said 11-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte. "It's pushing me. We bring out the best of each other."
It was Bowman who helped bring out the best in Phelps. When Phelps was 11, it was Bowman who first told him that he could make an Olympic team — more specifically, the next Olympic team. Which Phelps did. At 15, he debuted. He didn't medal, but showed flashes of his eventual greatness by making the final in the 200-meter butterfly, where he finished fifth.
During their joint press conference before the Olympic Trials, Bowman joked with Phelps and the press saying that he didn't know how Phelps would do. Before his best meet ever — the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia — Bowman thought Phelps "was going to be terrible."
"It was all coaching, really," Bowman said.
Are more gold medals in store for Phelps? Is the 20-gold barrier a possibility? On 18 separate occasions, he's heard the National Anthem boomed in aquatic centers around the world. In Athens, in Beijing and most recently in London, Phelps was the centerpiece of an Olympics. His fifth could be follow in line of the previous three, but will hold a stark contrast:
It's the last one.
"More and more every day, I look back and I see how much my life is a dream come true," Phelps said. "Everything in life happens for a reason, and I'm sitting here today for a reason. Whatever that reason is, I don't know."
Twitter: @chriskamrani —
Au revoir, Michael Phelps
Age » 31
Sport » Swimming
Hometown » Towson, Md.
The immortal » The most-decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals — 18 of which are gold — in his past three Olympic Games will retire from swimming after these Rio Games.
Swimming career » The four-time Olympian is coming off a six-medal performance in London in 2012 (four golds, two silvers). The peak of his career came in 2008 in Beijing where he won eight gold medals. In 2004 in Athens, Phelps won six golds and two bronzes.
Phelps in Rio » Will swim the 100-meter and 200-meter butterfly, the 200-meter individual medley and as many as three team relays, per the U.S. coaches' discretion.