In the two Olympic Games – Athens, Greece in 2004 and Beijing, China 2008 – Michael Phelps has set the record to be the youngest man to make a swimming world record series with his aim to change the peoples’ perspective to swimming sports. With this success, this has brought Phelps to the limelight of sports world and got immense attention from media.
Phelps was born in Baltimore, Maryland and was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Despite his conditions, the 7 years old Michael Phelps joined the North ltimore Aquatic Club. And swimming has been an ideal outlet of his hyperactivity disorder. At eleven, Phelps was discovered by Bob Bowman who saw his swimming potentials. As Bowman said in an interview for Sports Illustrated for Kids “You saw a kid who couldn’t wait to get in the water. A kid who pushed himself beyond where you tried to push him…” Then later, Bowman has been discussing long-term training plans with Debbie Phelps, mother of Michael. Debbie even exclaimed after hearing Bowman “I’m thinking, This man is crazy,this is my eleven-year-old baby, and he is projecting 2012?” in an interview for Time magazine.
Phelps’ coach, Bowman, has encouraged him to train hard so he could watch the Olympics Games in 2000, but Phelps was not happy for just watching so he pushed himself to train harder. And at the age of 15, he got a place in the Olympic trials and made him youngest member of the American team for the Olympics in Sydney, Australia. Phelps became the first swimmer to qualify in six individual Olympic events in the 2004 Olympic Trials. When he aged 16, he again set a record to become the youngest Professional American male swimmer.
The two-time Olympian, Pablo Morales said in an interview for Time “He is really redefining our expectations of swimming excellence,” and “He is blazing his own trail now, and there is probably a whole global army of young swimmers who are looking up to him.”
Phelps being a professional swimmer, he received a lot of endorsements from big companies and sports brand like Visa, Speedo, and AT&T. Those companies also offered him a million dollar bonus if he could break Mark Spitz’s record in the Olympics.
Phelps broke the record of Mark Spitz’s 7 (Munich, 1972) gold medals in a single Olympics when he competed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics where he won 8 gold medals. In his overall records, he has gathered 16 Olympic medals – 8 golds at the Beijing Olympics and 6 golds and 2 bronze at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Then only five months after the 2000 Olympics in Australia, HE set again a world record for the 200-meter butterfly category and that has been the starting point of his career in setting world record breaking swims.
In the World Championships last 2005; Phelps won six medals (5 gold and 1 silver) where he broke one championship record. Again he for 7 gold medals at the 2007 World Championships that tied up but didn’t broke Spitz’s record for gold medals in an international competition. Nonetheless, this made Michael Phelps the most successful swimmer ever recorder for the World Championships.
Despite these successful records, Phelps continuously trained 365 days a year without much day offs and commonly swims 7 to 12 miles every day. He also maintains to do his workouts and the remarkable Michael Phelps diet that has amaze people how he manage to handle. Michael Phelps Net worth revealed above is only an overview and an estimate based on the existing data; it is possible that Michael Phelps net worth has changed since the he have been into many investments and charities.