“We Created a Monster”- Michael Phelps’ Coach Opened Up on His Olympic Journey

There’s a cost for greatness, but sometimes you don’t realize it until it’s too late. When people look at Michael Phelps, all they see is 23 Olympic golds, 39 world records, and an excellent swimmer who went on to become a legend. However, every moment he spent being the greatest swimmer of all time, he failed to acknowledge the mental health issues that made him vulnerable.

Coach Bob Bowman, who majorly helped shape his incredible career, also let him throw things that bothered him under the rug for the sake of his Olympic glory. At the time he was competing, the world only saw Michael Phelps as an outstanding swimmer. However, beneath the skin of a great athlete was a man struggling with mental health deterioration he suppressed until he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

Coach Bowman let Michael Phelps brush off problems that bothered him

Since early 2000, Phelps had just one goal in mind, and Bowman did everything to help him reach that goal. However, when Phelps finally won gold medals in every event in Beijing, the path forward haunted them. “We created a monster, and after Beijing, it was too big to fail,” said Bowman.

But in order to keep Phelps on track, he let him push away things that made him vulnerable and were eating him from inside. Bowman further added, “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.”

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It was only later, when he was in therapy, that Phelps realized he had been avoiding the confrontations for too long. He finally decided that the only way out of it was to face every single one of his fears head-on.

‘The Baltimore Bullet’ and Bowman had no clue what to do next

After Beijing, Phelps and Bowman had no idea about what their next goal would be. In the words of Phelps himself, “It’s like we dreamed the biggest dream we could possibly dream and we got there. What do we do now?” Hence, they lost the will as well as the direction for their future endeavors.

If you break down Michael Phelps’ entire swimming journey, you would realize that it’s filled with glorious moments, but there are also some dark days in it. However, the way he dealt with everything, good and bad, through therapy and came out stronger, speaks volumes about his character as a human being.

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