Beneath the Surface: My Story - Softcover

Phelps, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1683580877 ISBN 13: 9781683580874

Verlag: Sports Publishing, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Peek into the mind of a champion swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time (28 medals, including 23 gold)

In this candid memoir, Phelps talks openly about his battle with attention deficit disorder, the trauma of his parents’ divorce, and the challenges that come with being thrust into the limelight.

Readers will relive all the heart-stopping glory as Phelps completes his journey from the youngest man to ever set a world swimming record in 2001, to an Olympic powerhouse in 2008, to surpassing the greatest athlete of ancient Greece, Leonidas of Rhodes, with 13 triumphs in 2016. Athletes and fans alike will be fascinated by insights into Phelps’s training, mental preparation, and behind-the-scenes perspective on international athletic competitions.

A chronicle of Phelps’s evolution from awkward teenager to record-breaking powerhouse, Beneath the Surface is a must-read for any sports fan.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bob Costasis a long-time broadcaster who has covered every major American sporting event throughout his career, as well as the winter and summer Olympic Games. Over the course of his career, Costas has won twenty-eight Emmy awards, and in 2012, he was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame.

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Beneath the Surface

My Story

By Michael Phelps, Brian Cazeneuve

Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright © 2016 Michael Phelps and Brian Cazeneuve
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-68358-087-4

Contents

Editor's Note, 
Foreword, 
Acknowledgments, 
CHAPTER 1 My Own Miracle, 
CHAPTER 2 Close Calls, 
CHAPTER 3 Into the Water, 
CHAPTER 4 Coach Bob, 
CHAPTER 5 A Sister's Brave Fight, 
CHAPTER 6 A Big Step, 
CHAPTER 7 Breaking Out, 
CHAPTER 8 Now for the Long Haul, 
CHAPTER 9 Me, Second?, 
CHAPTER 10 The Olympian, 
CHAPTER 11 On Top of the World, 
CHAPTER 12 Coming Together, 
CHAPTER 13 Life as a Pro, 
CHAPTER 14 Heroes and Inspirations, 
CHAPTER 15 Down Under Again, Mate, 
CHAPTER 16 The Power of Words, 
CHAPTER 17 Five Dogs?, 
CHAPTER 18 Reaching Out, 
CHAPTER 19 I'll Follow You, 
CHAPTER 20 Emotional Sendoff, 
CHAPTER 21 Trials and Deliberations, 
CHAPTER 22 Time to Think, 
CHAPTER 23 Bad Third, Good Third, 
CHAPTER 24 A Team Effort, 
CHAPTER 25 Dreams Fulfilled, 
CHAPTER 26 Touring, 
CHAPTER 27 A Bad Mistake, 
CHAPTER 28 Off To Ann Arbor, 
CHAPTER 29 The Wakeup Call, 
CHAPTER 30 New Family, New Places, 
CHAPTER 31 Rebuilding, 
CHAPTER 32 Optimism Abounds, 
CHAPTER 33 On Top of the Worlds, 
CHAPTER 34 Beijing Beckons, 
Photo Insert, 

CHAPTER 1

MY OWN MIRACLE

The night before my first Olympic race in Athens, I could see myself in a movie. Hold on, it isn't as fun as it sounds. I was in my room at the Olympic village, watching Miracle, the story about the 1980 U.S. hockey team. I had watched the movie twice before, and there was one scene that really hit home. About four months before the team won the gold medal in Lake Placid and inspired the whole country, it played an exhibition game in Norway that the players never forgot. The Americans tied that night, but the listless way they played enraged their head coach, Herb Brooks. After the game was over and the players figured they'd have time to rest, Brooks made them skate from one end of the ice to the other, no matter how tired they were. After they finished one round, he'd blow his whistle and shout out, "Again." And away they'd go. "Again." The players were gasping for air. "Again." The players were falling over from exhaustion. "Again." Soon one of the workmen came by and turned off the lights in the arena, but Brooks wasn't satisfied. "Again." After a few dozen "agains," Coach Brooks finally let the players go back to their locker rooms, and they knew after that, no matter what the score, it was his job to drive them until they gave their best effort. They knew that no matter what obstacle they faced at the Olympics, even a game against the seemingly unbeatable Soviets, they had already overcome something more difficult — that night of endless "agains." They may have hated Brooks for it at the time, but how could they have been that good without him?

Fast forward 24 years to a pool at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. It was a Friday in February 2004, a day that was supposed to mean a light workout of about 5,000 easy yards. That's almost three miles, which for us is almost a day off. Instead it was the day Herb Brooks reappeared as my coach, Bob Bowman. We started doing these kicking drills: 75 yards of kicking only, at full speed, followed by 50 yards easy. After a couple of those, you start to feel a burn in your legs, so they get a little wobbly as you get out of the pool. But do enough of them, and your legs get stronger and you're able to kick harder and more efficiently during competitions. We were supposed to do eight sets of these drills, but apparently we didn't do them very well. "C'mon, get it right," I remember Bob saying that day. So eight sets became ten. "No loafing," Bob shouted. And we were up to 12. "If you're not serious, why show up?" Fifteen and counting. "I said full speed." Eighteen. You know, when Bob gets really angry, there's a vein in the right side of his neck that just gets bigger and more pronounced. By the time we were on our 24th set, his vein looked like a second neck.

When I got out of the pool that day, you could have twirled up my legs and put tomato sauce on them because they felt like spaghetti. That was a serious burn. Could even the Olympics be this hard? The movie resonated with me because without all the hard work they put in, without a few days of spaghetti legs, the U.S. hockey players would never have been capable of their miracle. They worked at it. They needed someone to push them. They needed to push themselves. They became a family. They grew up. They understood that commitment — real commitment you never knew you could make — comes before winning. And they could never have done it alone. At the Olympic Village the night before the biggest meet of my life, I fell asleep to Miracle.

* * *

I woke up the next morning at 7 a.m. and I had never been so pumped for anything in my life. Usually I get fidgety when I'm in the middle of the most intense part of my training. As I get closer to a big meet, I relax and get laid back, because the hard work is done and the fun part, the thrill of competition, is in front of me. On the first Saturday of competition, I couldn't wait to get back in the water. I had the 400-meter individual medley that day, with the top eight swimmers from the morning heats advancing to the evening finals. Before the morning swim, I followed the routine Bob had meticulously planned for me: I ate a light oatmeal breakfast, stretched for half an hour exactly two hours before the race, did 35 minutes of drills and light swimming, relaxed up to half an hour before the event, put on the racing suit, took a light swim ten minutes before and then got on the blocks to race. Bob has the internal stopwatch of a mad scientist. If daily plans are off by minutes or if split times are off by hundredths of seconds, the vein starts popping and the lungs start shouting. He doesn't want anything to be random.

Bob and I didn't say much about the morning prelim, which was a good sign. I had the fastest time in the heats and I was considered the favorite to win that night. A year earlier I won the 400 IM at the World Championships in Barcelona in world-record time. With a possible eight events staring at me, Bob and I both thought it was a good thing that the final of the 400 IM, a "safe" race, was ahead of me on the first night.

Between sessions, I talked briefly to Erik Vendt, the other U.S. swimmer in the race. Erik and I had talked about finishing one-two as we had at the Olympic Trials the previous month in Long Beach. Unfortunately, he didn't swim that well in the morning and barely qualified for the final, in eighth position. "Forget about it," I told him. "This wasn't you and you know that. We'll get 'em tonight."

An hour later I was back at the village, hoping to rest and trying to figure out why I couldn't mash my pillow into the right shape. Usually, I'm so spent after being in the water, I fall asleep like a rock and you can give me a gold medal for power napping. No luck that day. I stared at the ceiling in my room for two solid hours. Try telling a kid to fall asleep on Christmas Eve. Can't do it. The anticipation is way too intense, except that this wasn't something I'd been waiting for since last December 26; I had been waiting for this for as long as I can remember having goals. One gold medal. That's what I thought about since 1992, the year I realized I could...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Sports Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1683580877
• ISBN 13: 9781683580874
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande