During an interview on the Pat McAfee Show on Friday, 23-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps said he’s not currently considering a comeback attempt because it would require too much time way from his family.
But if he did want to return to swimming at 39 years old, Phelps thinks he could win a fifth Olympic title in the 200 IM — though he acknowledges it would take four years to do.
“I think it would take four years to do — I think I could win the 200 IM,” Phelps told McAfee. “I was going faster eight years ago than most of the world is going now.”
Phelps shut down the idea of a comeback for now, saying the conversation came up while watching the U.S. Olympic Trials with his 4-year-old son, Maverick.
According to Phelps, Maverick asked if he could still get in the water and compete with the top Americans right now. Phelps replied that Maverick wouldn’t be able to see him very often due to training in this hypothetical scenario. “I don’t want that,” Maverick said. “I don’t want that either,” Phelps concurred. “So that was the end of the the conversation for us,” he recalled to McAfee.
Phelps captured his fourth consecutive 200 IM crown at the Rio Olympics in 2016 with a winning time of 1:54.66, narrowly missing his Olympic record of 1:54.23 from the Beijing 2008 edition. His most recent Olympic victory eight years ago is still two seconds faster than the winning time at the 2024 World Championships (1:56.64), quicker than Leon Marchand went to win the 2023 world title (1:54.82), and faster than Wang Shun went to win the last Olympic title in Tokyo (1:55.00).
When asked if he still swims anymore, Phelps answered, “Only if my head really is in a dark place.”
“It’s the only place where I can just be,” he said of the water. “I don’t have to think or do anything.”
I 100% think he would make the US team. The 200 IM is so weak rn it’s embarrassing. Give it another decade and women will have caught up
PS. He’s 39, yeah. There was, if you didn’t notice, a 35 year old woman in the 1500 at US swimming trials, Ashley Twichell, that got 3rd- she finished 9 second behind Katie Grimes. Look it up. Being a 43 year old man in a sport is 1,000,000% something that should NOT be unheard of.
Y’all know he’s going to take these comments personally and start rage-training.
If he had started 4 years ago for paris then maybe i could see him fighting for a podium finish. But definetly not this lmao
Is it just me or does Phelps look unhealthily skinny? Maybe he’s just naturally losing weight from not training and eating so much, but it looks a bit concerning to me.
Man bun
I agree
Phelps is my favorite athlete ever but respectfully he would get cooked. I think if he had trained for Tokyo then a few medals and maybe a gold or two would be reasonable expectations, but that’s about as far as I could see him going
He’ll get cooked! In both IM’s
Imagine if both Phelps and Lochte announced they were training for 2028, oh, man…
What a dick…