American Aquaman

Doing some photo hunting for a colleague and I landed on this killer piece from Michael Sokolove in the New York Times Magazine a few years back. What a great piece of work on olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. Give it a read: Phelps is no good on land. He is weirdly hyperflexible, what is sometimes called double-jointed, and therefore not entirely stable. He does not lift weights. He used to run but gave it up because of a tendency to step in holes or trip over nothing. To exert himself on land, even mildly, is to risk orthopedic peril. A couple of years ago he went bowling with his buddies and caught hell for it. What was he thinking? Were a couple of frames really worth it?

By early afternoon, Phelps was finished modeling swimsuits and back in the Town Car, moving toward his element. Wherever he is, water must be made available to him. He craves it like some sea creature who can survive for only so long at the ocean's edge. Over the last seven years, he has spent just 5 days — 5 out of more than 2,500 — without being in the water at least once. In 2002 he returned to his home outside Baltimore from an international swim meet in Japan, exhausted and planning to take at least one day off, but at 3 the next morning, unable to sleep, he was on his computer, instant-messaging his equally jet-lagged coach: "I want to swim. When can u meet me at the pool?"