Part II: How Michael Phelps Beat The Icarus Curse
Six Weeks in Recovery brought the Olympian more Gold Medals and His Father
In September 2014, Michael Phelps sat in a county jail cell in Baltimore, staring at damp, gray walls. Hours earlier, he had been arrested for driving under the influence, clocked at 84 mph in a 45 mph zone. The headlines were merciless.
He called his agent and said: “I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
The Flight of Icarus
“Once my father and I started talking, I haven’t had a dream about snakes since.”
Long before the world knew of Michael Phelps, the Roman poet Ovid told a story in Metamorphoses (8 AD) about a boy who flew too close to the sun.
The myth of Daedalus and Icarus are a father and son trapped on the island of Crete. To escape, Daedalus — the master craftsman — fashioned wings of wax and feathers, but warned Icarus: Don’t fly too low, or the sea’s dampness will weigh you down. Don’t fly too high, or the sun’s heat will melt your wings.
It could have easily been fatherly advice on work/life balance. Icarus ignored the warning. Intoxicated by flight, he soared higher and higher, until the wax liquefied, the feathers scattered, and he plummeted into the sea.
The lesson is usually a cautionary tale: Too much ambition leads to ruin. Stay in the midfle lane. But there’s another interpretation — one that applies to the equally dramatic story of Michael Phelps.
Icarus fell not just because he was reckless, but because he had abandoned his father, his mentor. ( The word comes from the Greek tutor of Odysseus’ son Telemachus.)
Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history, catapulted to fame so dramatically it seemed supernatural. But his fall, like Icarus, was inevitable. And his ability to rise again was the consequence of something Icarus lacked: a Daedalus — a guiding hand to help him mend his wings.
For years, that role was filled by Bob Bowman, his longtime coach. Later, it was someone else — his estranged father, Fred Phelps.
That was the real story he came to tell in Arizona when he spoke to my class at ASU. The challenge for the interview wasn’t to cast doubt on his phenomenal record. Phelps is an Olympic god. In person, Tall, rangy, magnetic, he walks with a feline muscularity that makes his underwater performance seem not so far-fetched.
The one-man all-star team is a trophy room unto himself, wallpapered in gold, silver, and bronze. Across five Olympic Games, from 2000 to 2016, from Sydney to Athens London to Beijing to Rio, Phelps amassed an astonishing 28 Olympic medals, including a record-breaking 23 golds. This haul places him far ahead of any other Olympic athlete, nearly three times that of his closest competitor, who earned no more than eight.
If Phelps divided into two he would occupy first and second place among all Olympians since 1896.
If Phelps divided into three, he’d be the first, second, and fourth most decorated Olympian.
He is not just a winner, but a paradigm of success, someone whose reputation will live on as long as anyone is building Olympic pools.
But what was really behind the golden mask of success, I wondered?
Would he even know?
ASU Coach Bob Bowman had Phelps on a grueling regimen: three two-hour swim sessions daily, starting at six each morning, complemented by weightlifting, ice baths, stretching, and massages.
Despite his dominance in the pool, Phelps had a problem. Genadijus Sokolovas, USA Swimming’s director of physiology, noted, “On land, he’s one of the weakest swimmers we’ve ever measured.” It meant he was slow off the blocks.
Bowman countered, emphasizing Phelps’ aquatic prowess: “Michael could train for strength on land, but how relevant is that?” Phelps’ unique physiology — large hands and feet acting as natural paddles and a potent kick — more than made up for these land-based shortcomings.
Bowman designed a demanding diet regimen — that allowed him to amplify his strengths in the water by maintaining maximum muscle density: he consumed between 8,000 to 10,000 calories daily, maintaining his 6'4" frame and 165-pound weight. Breakfasts included multiple egg sandwiches, omelets, and pancakes; lunches featured substantial amounts of pasta and sandwiches; dinners mirrored lunch with additional energy drinks.
This rigorous routine along with his natural ability seemed foolproof, setting the stage for Olympic glory.
That is, until his hunger kicked in one cold winter Michigan morning.
Broken Wing
Michael Phelps once quipped to reporters, “Eat, sleep, and swim; that’s all I can do.” It wasn’t just a catchy line; it was a prophecy. Logging 50 miles in the pool each week, living in a near-hypnotic routine, hunger gnawing at him as he headed to the U. of Michigan Wolverine Aquatic Center parking lot, aiming for a favorite eatery, something was bound to go wrong.
The morning sun had melted the frost. As he approached the car, his right foot betrayed him, slipping on the ice. Instinctively, he thrust out his hand to break the fall. Lifting himself, he watched as a deep bruise spread across his wrist.
Dreams of Beijing evaporated. Phelps knew better than anyone that for an Olympic swimmer, the wrist is pivotal. It’s the fulcrum that Archimedes once mused could move the Earth.
And now, his lever was compromised.
When pressed about the accident, Phelps told the Baltimore Sun, “I am a fish out of water. I was falling. I went to catch myself, and I tweaked it.” Coach Bob Bowman observed, “He was devastated.” Phelps quietly concurred, “It’s over. I’m finished.”
“You should just keep me in the pool, Phelps joked later. Put a bed in the pool, give me food in the pool, so I never get hurt. I’m bad on land.”
Bob Bowman, the ever-unshakable coach, told the Detroit Free Press he was “not worried.” But sports analysts disagreed. They declared his Olympic chances were over.
Phelps was devastated. “It’s over,” he muttered. “I’m finished.”
But Bowman saw something different. Instead of giving up, Phelps trained using only his legs, turning his greatest weakness into his greatest advantage.
Nine months later, in Beijing’s 100-meter butterfly final, he was trailing Milorad Čavić by a full stroke. With only a fraction of a second left, he activated the same turbocharged kick he’d honed in rehab — and touched the wall first.
Gold by 1/100th of a second.
It was proof that hardship could be alchemy, that failure could be fuel.
“It made me realize that things can change in the blink of an eye,” Phelps later said. “And it also made me realize that when you use your imagination, anything can happen.”
But there’s something dangerous about early astonishing victories. They make you believe you’ve mastered the fall. That no matter how high you fly, you’ll always find a way back up.
Phelps had survived one broken wing.
But a far greater crash was waiting.
The Midas Touch
After Beijing, Phelps felt unstoppable. But by the time London 2012 arrived, the fire was fading.
He won four gold medals, but something was different. He skipped practices, fought with Bowman, and admitted he wasn’t even enjoying the sport anymore. Retirement was supposed to bring relief. Instead, it brought something worse: emptiness.
“Just get to the next Olympics,” he told himself. “That will fix everything.”
But it didn’t. The cycle had broken.
In September 2014, Michael Phelps sat in a county jail cell in Baltimore, staring at damp, gray walls.
Hours earlier, he had been arrested for driving under the influence, clocked at 84 mph in a 45 mph zone. The headlines were merciless. The golden boy had cracked. His image had drowned.
But the real problem wasn’t alcohol. It wasn’t even the weight of a life lived under relentless scrutiny.
It was something deeper — something that had been unraveling for years.
“I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
That was the text Phelps sent to Peter Carlisle, his longtime agent and de facto consigliere.
Carlisle had seen bad news before — sponsorship deals gone awry, media firestorms — but this was different. This wasn’t just an athlete in decline. This was a man on the edge.
For years, Phelps had lived in four-year cycles.
Win. Train. Repeat.
Every Olympic high was followed by an identity crisis. After Beijing 2008, where he shattered Mark Spitz’s record with eight gold medals, the inevitable question loomed: What now?
Bob Bowman had seen it coming.
“We created a monster,” Bowman later admitted. “After Beijing, it was too big to fail. We had to do whatever we could to keep it going. That’s how we got to London. The deal with his dad, how to come to grips with his fame — those kinds of things, I thought, we’ll deal with later.”
But later had arrived.
For years, Phelps had drifted from his father, Fred Phelps, and even from Bowman. The only structure he knew was training. Outside the pool, none of it worked.
“Just get to the next Olympics,” he told himself. “That will fix everything.”
But it didn’t. And now, in that jail cell, he was flying too high with no one to catch him.
Return to Daedalus
In October 2014, one month after his arrest, Michael Phelps entered The Meadows, an elite treatment center in Arizona.
It was there, stripped of distractions, that he finally confronted the thing he had spent his life avoiding:
His father.
Fred Phelps had left when Michael was nine. The distance between them had widened over the years — an occasional text, a handshake at an event. By the time Michael was winning gold medals, his father was a shadow in the background.
But when Phelps sent an invitation to Family Week at The Meadows, Fred Phelps didn’t hesitate.
“That’s my baby boy,” he said. “So I was going to be there for him, whether he cold-shouldered me or not.”
Their reunion wasn’t dramatic. No swelling orchestral score. Just father and son, sitting together, talking — for the first time in years.
And that’s when Phelps noticed something strange.
“Once my father and I started talking, I haven’t had a dream about snakes since.”
(author’s note: Fred Phelps, Michael Phelps’ father, passed away on October 7, 2022, at the age of 71.)
Phoenix Rising
Phelps didn’t just return to his father. He returned to Bowman.
At first, it wasn’t about swimming. He wasn’t sure he wanted to race again. But Bowman saw it in his eyes.
“I think he needs the pool,” Bowman said. “Psychologically, he needs it.”
So in 2015, Phelps followed Bowman to Arizona State University, where Bowman became head coach of the ASU Sun Devils swim team.
It was a fitting move, not just for their relationship, but for the symbolism of the place.
Phoenix, Arizona.
A city named after the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes.
Just as the phoenix burns and is reborn, Phelps was shedding the version of himself that had crashed. He wasn’t racing for gold anymore. He was racing for something deeper — his own redemption.
And in 2016, he did what no fallen Olympian had ever done before.
He returned for one final Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Not to prove anything to the world.
To prove something to himself.
He left Rio with six more medals — five gold, one silver — and then, finally, he walked away on his own terms.
The Icarus Paradox
The story of Icarus and Daedalus is often told as a warning against overreaching, but maybe we’ve misunderstood it.
Maybe the real message isn’t “Don’t fly too high.”
Maybe it’s “Don’t fly alone.” That’s the secret to Icarus flying as high as nature will allow.
Before Michael Phelps was a swimmer, he was just an ordinary kid searching for guidance, a young man trying to outrun his demons, and, eventually, a son looking for a father, and learning to forgive and be forgiven.
When he finally found his way back to his father and to Bowman, he didn’t just reclaim his greatness in the pool. He reinvented himself.
“Coach Bowman showed me confidence. He believed in me,” Phelps said later. “When you tell a kid, ‘I can put you on the Olympic team in four years,’ who’s not going to say OK? … So I listened to everything that he told me for four years. I made my first Olympic team.”
In the Greek myth, Icarus didn’t make the team.
Michael Phelps grabbed the gold.
