Who is Michael Phelps?
Michael Phelps is an American former competitive swimmer and an Olympian.
By winning eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, Phelps surpassed fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz’s 1972 record of seven medals.
At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Michael Phelps won five gold medals and one silver. This led him to become the most successful athlete in the Games for the fourth Olympics in a row.
Michael Phelps’s Early life, Childhood, Education
Michael Fred Phelps famously known as Michael Phelps was born on June 30, 1985, in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood of nearby Towson.
He studied at Rodgers Forge Elementary, Dumbarton Middle School, and Towson High School. Phelps is the youngest of three children. His mother, Deborah Sue “Debbie” Phelps (nee Davisson) worked as a middle school principal.
His father, Michael Fred Phelps, is a retired Maryland State Trooper who played football in high school and college and tried out for the Washington Redskins in the 1970s. Phelps has mixed ethnicity.
He is of English, German, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descent. His parents divorced in 1994 when he was nine years old, and his father remarried in 2000. He graduated from Towson High School in 2003.
Michael Phelps began swimming at the age of seven, partly because of the influence of his sisters and partly to provide him with an outlet for his energy.
After retirement in 2016, he stated “The only reason I ever got in the water was my mom wanted me to learn how to swim. My sisters and I fell in love with the sport, and we decided to swim”.
When Phelps was in the sixth grade, he was found to be suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
By the age of 10, Michael Phelps already had a national record for his age group (in the 100-meter butterfly) and began to train at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club under coach Bob Bowman.
More age group records followed, and as of 2016 Phelps still holds 12 age group records (nine in long courses and three in short courses).
