Michael Phelps is the greatest American swimmer. He is the only fourteen-time Olympic champion and seventeen-time world champion. And his sports career is not over yet, because he is only 27 years old. The "Baltimore Bullet", as fans called it, is ready for new victories and records.
Michael's father is a police officer and his mother is a teacher at the school. They divorced when the boy was 9 years old. Michael stayed with his mother and two older sisters. The girls were already swimming when their brother came to the pool at the age of seven. Until the age of 12, Michael was involved in other sports (baseball and American football).
Phelps suffered from scattered attention syndrome, so his studies were poorly given to him. He could hardly concentrate on something and knocked down all the objects around him. Often this behavior caused laughter of peers, the boy got rid of this only in the pool, where he literally transformed, turning into a graceful aquatic inhabitant.
Michael was lucky and he met someone who saw his great potential. Bob Bowman trains the young man to this day. Then, in 2000, Phelps became the youngest participant in the Olympic Games in the history of American swimming. In Sydney, the teenager was fifth. But already in 2001, Michael set a world record in butterfly at a distance of 200 meters. He was not even 16 years old!
But Phelps became a real world sensation in Athens at the 2004 Olympics, where he won eight medals, six of them gold. In the same year, the young man entered the university at the Faculty of Sports Marketing and Management, but did not give up swimming.
The next Olympics in Beijing brought Michael eight more gold medals, thereby breaking all records for the number and quality of awards in one competition. Phelps became the most titled athlete in the world. For his amazing achievements, the swimmer received one million dollars from the company Speedo, his sponsor.
The athlete trains for several hours every day so as not to lose shape and prepare for new records. Outside the pool, Michael is an ordinary guy, but amazingly charming and funny. He loves computer games, TV, music and popcorn buckets. Phelps has many friends with whom he spends his free time. He also has a favorite - the English bulldog Herman.
In 2009, Michael had an unpleasant episode - he was convicted of smoking narcotic weed and was disqualified for three months. That time is long gone and now the great swimmer Michael Phelps is fighting for medals at the 30th London Olympics.
