Michael Phelps
Biography at gardenofpraise.com
While Michael Phelps was growing up he was tall and lanky, and his
arms swung below his knees when he stood up. Kids made fun of him and
bullied him. At the age of nine he was diagnosed with ADHD. His two big
sisters, Whitney and Hilary were good swimmers. Whitney even finished
sixth in the 200 butterfly at the 1996 Olympic trials. Michael also
became interested in swimming and his mother encouraged him to swim. It
was an outlet for his abundant energy and the lane markers tended to
give him the structure he needed. He loved swimming. When he was 11
years old he began to work with Bob Bowman, a swim coach, and Bob began
pointing him toward the Olympics.
He made his first Olympic team in the 200 butterfly race in the year
2000 when he was just 15 years old.
At the Olympics in Athens in 2004 he won 6 gold medals and 2 bronze
medals. At the 2007 world championships he won 7 gold medals.
Most recently in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China he won 8 gold
medals! This topped swimmer Mark Spitz's thirty-six-year-old record of
7 gold medals which he won in the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Phelps swims 7 days a week, two to five hours a day. He doesn't like to
be a loser. He likes to win whether it's a video game or a race. If he
loses, he just works harder so he can be a winner the next time.
His life revolves around swimming, sleeping, and eating. Swimming burns
a lot of calories, and he eats a tremendous amount of food; 8,000 -
12,000 calories a day. This is five times as much as the average man
eats.
Michael says, “If you dream as big as you can dream, anything is
possible.”