Shouts From the Stands: An Open Letter to Michael Phelps

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June 30, 2016
Buenos Aires, Argentina

A letter to Michael Phelps,

5th Olympics. I am supposed to be studying for some economic history final I have in three days but instead I am watching the NBC coverage of the Olympic Trials via a faltering wireless connection in Buenos Aires. It is the one week every four years where swimming gets to be in the American spotlight prior to the Olympic Games and for swimmers and swammers alike, seeing people chase that red world record line, driving at it with their fingers, evokes a fierce sensation that never goes away, no matter how many days or years it’s been since we’ve last been in a pool.

5th Olympics. Jesus, what people do to just make it to one!

Coming from Mexico in the third grade to suburban Houston, Texas has probably very little to do with you. But as I started swimming again in the States, I began to look up to the American swimming figures. I remember watching the Athens Games where you won your first Olympic medals and cheering on Team USA from halfway around the world in a small apartment. I was not even American and I wanted you guys to beat everyone else. I also remember the books, the videos and the publicity after 2004. And although this was fantastic, I could not help but notice some earthly similarities: your mom worked at a public school, like mine, your sister, albeit older, swam too, and your father was a missing figure from a young age, same here. For a kid who is ten or eleven years old at the time, noticing little similarities like these are incredibly encouraging. I remember hopping in the pool thinking that if you could do it, then I could too.

Then came the DUI offense in 2004. I was far too young at that time to recognize the situation, so I did not pay much attention to it. You were the all-American boy. Flawless.

From 2006 to 2008 were my best swimming years – I was close to the National Age Group times in breaststroke and I was amongst the fastest 8 swimmers in Texas in the 200 IM and 200 breaststroke. With the hype for Beijing and the widely publicized goal of the 8 gold medals, how does one not get caught up in the moment? Swimming was an everyday thing, some would say a twice a day thing given the training. You take to the pool with heart and desire and maybe in special cases you become something of a swim geek; you memorize the times, the standards, the records, all that. You learn it to the hundredth of a second.

I would always go back to Mexico for the summers and train with Dorados under coach Norihiko Kawai. Training with some of Mexico’s most elite swimmers, I got in the groove of competing at the national level there. But we still talked about you and other American swimmers. We would joke around saying we had Lochte’s backstroke start, Hansen’s breaststroke, and your lung-bursting underwater starts. I remember watching and tearing up with some friends when you won that 8th gold at Beijing. You had won by body lengths and even by a miraculous .01 of a second and now it was done. The unreal had been achieved. The sky was the limit. We took to the pool once again with a newfound fervor for staring at black lines and doing countless laps. I remember being at a swim meet in Katy, Texas with an article plastered to the locker room describing how your feat was invigorating swimmers and athletes alike. We all felt it and as swimmers you had made the sport recognized in the American landscape.

And then one morning I wake up to the radio saying how some “swimmer dude” had been caught smoking a bong at a party. Nothing serious except it was Michael Phelps. I remember feeling stunned. The drug wars were just beginning in my native country and here my idol was smoking weed. I was disheartened and this time I was older to realize its consequences. This was around the time I was really considering leaving the sport – I was in a plateau, my competitors were beating me, I was losing the desire to get in the water at6 am. The way the media portrayed your ‘downfall’ was not exactly helping.

I didn’t quit swimming thanks to a new team and a new coach. I kept at it, and many ups and downs came about. It was all part of the sport and I was beginning to like it again. London 2012 was the summer before my senior year of high school and seeing you back in the Olympic circle again and cementing your persona not only as the greatest swimmer ever but as arguably the greatest Olympian ever was enough to bring back the fire into the competitor’s heart. My high school team was inspired again, our relay would watch videos of your relays, and we would have a grand time at it. The swim season turned out to be one of the most memorable, and sadly but still not definitively, one of my last ones as a competitive swimmer.

Now that I am older and I am reading all these New York Times and ESPN articles about your difficult years, I realize the example you set that shaped my ideas about success in earlier years was too idealistic. But I also came to understand how living to attain a god’s status in swimming tore you away from an even remotely normal lifestyle and how, along with that, you are to be held to a god’s standards. You must be infallible, perfect. And I realized, along with others, that you are not.

But you always bounce back and that is the thing that has always made me admire you. The relentless drive to compete against yourself, to improve. You trip and you fall into holes you never imagined. And you showed that beneath the gold and silver and bronze, you’re still human. Someone that even a kid from Mexico can relate to.

Also, happy birthday,

Humberto Juárez Rocha