No Limits Read online

  I would always be the last one out of the pool. She was always working so late; I remember it seemed like I was always the last one to leave. Unless I’d been kicked out of practice early by Bob, for not doing what he wanted the way he wanted it done or when he wanted it done; in that case, I had to sit there and wait for her, anyway.

  All of this driving around, the back and forth on the roads around her job, required enormous dedication and sacrifice on my mom’s part. At the same time, it was a total reflection of who she is. And that’s something I am forever grateful for.

  She made it abundantly clear that we—she, my sisters, me—came first, even as she insisted that we have a passion for life itself and for something, or some variety of things.

  We had to have goals, drive, and determination. We would work for whatever we were going to get. We were going to strive for excellence, and to reach excellence you have to work at it and for it.

  Mom calls this common sense. She grew up in a blue-collar area of western Maryland. Her father was a carpenter. Her mother’s father was a miner. Neither of my mom’s parents went to college. They had four children—Mom was the second of the four—and all four are college graduates; Mom went on to earn a master’s degree.

  My dad, Fred, used to take me fishing when I was a little boy. He would take me to Baltimore Orioles games. He taught me to look people in the eye when I was meeting them and to shake hands like I meant it. He was a good athlete himself—a small-college football player—and, unquestionably, I inherited my competitive athletic drive from him. If I was playing sports, no matter what it was, my father’s direction was simple: Go hard and, remember, good guys finish second. That didn’t mean that you were supposed to be a jerk, but it did mean that you were there to compete as hard as you could. The time to be friends was after the race; during it, the idea was to win.

  My mother and father were high-school sweethearts in a mill town in western Maryland. Dad played football at Fairmont (West Virginia) State College; Mom followed him there. After they were married, they moved to the Baltimore area. My father moved out of the house when I was seven. As time went on, we spent less and less time together. Eventually, I stopped trying to include him in my activities and he, in turn, stopped trying to involve himself in mine.

  The last time I saw my father was at Whitney’s wedding, in October 2005. He and I didn’t talk at the wedding; there just hasn’t been anything to say for a while. Maybe there will be later.

  Having said that, I feel I have everything and everyone that anyone could ever ask for. I have the greatest people in the world around me and supporting me.

  My mom is an educator, now a school principal, and her passion in life is changing the lives of children. When she recognized a passion in her children for swimming, she was all in to help each of us.

  At the same time, things were going to be done in our house, and done a certain way, because that’s the way it was. Homework was going to get done. Clothes were going to get picked up off the floor. Kids were going to get taken to practice. We were all in it together.

  Not only that: Our house was always the home where any kid was welcome. If there was a kid who needed to stay over to make swim practice the next morning, we had a sleeping bag and a pillow.

  That work ethic, and that sense of teamwork, was always in our home. All of that went to the pool with me, from a very early age.

  It’s why, when I won my first Olympic gold medal, the first people I wanted to see when I had a quiet moment were my mom and my sisters.

  • • •

  They say that what the decathlon is to track and field, the 400 individual medley is to swimming.

  Most swimmers, like the vast majority of those who compete in track and field, are specialists. They do the backstroke, for instance. Or the breaststroke. That’s not to say they don’t know how to swim the other strokes. They do. But once they get to a certain age, they usually compete only in the one they’re best in.

  That’s why the IM is tough. You have to do all four strokes, and do them all well.

  The 400 IM is tougher still because it’s all four strokes and at distance. It requires strength, endurance, technique, and versatility.

  This race can make you hurt bad. Your shoulders start to burn. Your legs ache. You can’t get a breath. The pain is sometimes dull, throbbing. It’s like your body isn’t even in the unbelievably great shape it’s in. All you want is for the pain to stop.

  Who’s the mentally toughest? That’s what the 400 IM is all about.

  I had won the 400 IM at the 2003 championships in Barcelona in what was then a world-record time, 4:09.09.

  A year later, as I got ready to get into the pool for the 400 IM Olympic final in Athens, Rowdy Gaines, himself an Olympic champion in 1984, now an NBC analyst, was saying that this was the race that was going introduce America to Michael Phelps.

  I knew well the recent Olympic history of the event: Americans had gone 1–2 in the 400 IM in 1996 and in 2000. Dolan had won in Atlanta in 1996; Eric Namesnik, another Michigan man, had gotten silver. In 2000, Dolan repeated as Olympic champion; Erik Vendt, who had grown up in Massachusetts and gone to the University of Southern California, took silver.

  Lining up that Saturday evening in Athens, I was in Lane 4, Vendt in Lane 1.

  I have since watched the video of this race dozens of times, maybe hundreds. It’s the one race that, from the eight days of competition in Athens, still stands out most to me.

  After the butterfly leg, I led by more than a second; after the back, more than three, more than two body lengths ahead. The breaststroke had long been the weakest of my strokes. It was imperative on this leg that I not give up ground. I didn’t.

  100 meters to go. I turned and started doing the free.

  50.

  The swimmers who swim the fastest in the heats are assigned in the finals to the middle lanes. The advantage of swimming in the middle is that it’s easier to keep an eye on what everyone else is doing. Coming off the last wall, I saw that Alessio Boggiatto of Italy in Lane 3 was still approaching his turn; in Lane 5, Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh was not yet at the wall, either.

  I still had that one lap to go.

  But I knew already that I had won.

  And so, underwater, I smiled.

  Not even a half-minute later, I glided into the wall, and I was still smiling.

  I popped up and looked for Mom in the stands. Even before I looked at the scoreboard, I looked for Mom, and, there she was, standing next to Whitney and Hilary, all of them cheering and just going crazy. I turned to look at the clock. It said, “WR,” meaning world record, next to my name. 4:08.26. I raised my arm into the air.

  I had done it.

  I had won the Olympic gold medal I had been dreaming of since I was little.

  I had also, in that instant, become the first American gold medalist of the 2004 Athens Games.

  I really didn’t know what to do, or say, or think.

  “Mike! Mike!”

  It was Vendt. He was swimming over from Lane 1. Truthfully, in the excitement of the moment, I hadn’t noticed yet that he had finished second. We had gone 1–2. Cseh had finished third.

  In finishing second, Vendt had carried on one of the quirkiest streaks in Olympic history. Four Games in a row an American named Erik or Eric had finished second in the 400 IM; Namesnik had taken silver in 1992 as well.

  “Yeah, Vendt! Yeah!” I shouted. “Yeah! We did it!”

  I could not stop smiling.

  “So proud of you,” Bob said.

  “It felt great,” I replied.

  A little while later the top three finishers were called to the medals stand. An olive wreath went onto my head, the gold medal around my neck. The American flag went up, along with another for Vendt’s silver and the Hungarian flag for Cseh’s bronze. The “Star-Spangled Banner” began to play. I took the wreath off my head. The right thing to do is to take a hat off your head for the anthem; maybe a wreath was the same.r />
  As I listened to the anthem, playing for me, for my country, my eyes grew moist. Even so, I could not stop smiling.

  I had done it.

  After warming down, I grabbed my cell phone.

  When Mom and my sisters go to meets, Hilary is the keeper of the phone.

  “Where are you guys?” I asked her.

  “We’re over by a fence, behind you. They’re going to kick us out.”

  “Hold on. I want to see you guys. Meet at the gate.”

  Bob went with me, along with a doping official who was doing his official thing, just keeping an eye on me as he was supposed to do. Nothing untoward, nothing unusual about it. I walked toward the fence, my gold medal around my neck. My mom didn’t see Bob or the doping guy. She just saw me. To my mom it looked like I was ten, back at Meadowbrook. I had my gold medal around my neck and, in her mind’s eye, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my hand.

  I put the medal through the fence and said, “Look, Mom. Look what I did.”

  • • •

  That 400 IM in Athens was, as I see it, the turning point. I was nineteen. I had my first Olympic gold. My mom and sisters were there to watch—that was, to me, what meant so much.

  I did not go on to win eight gold medals in Athens. I won six. Eight overall, six gold, two bronze.

  On the one hand, the Athens Olympics were an extraordinary success for me. I had met the original goal and gone well beyond.

  On the other, I did not meet all my expectations.

  Thus I had ample motivation to keep swimming, keep pushing myself. Beijing was four years away. That’s a long time. And yet not.

  Because stuff happens.

  In the fall of 2004, I had major worries about my back.

  A year later, I broke a bone in my hand.

  In 2008, two years after that, I broke my wrist.

  So many newspaper, magazine, and website stories have been written about me that sometimes it seems almost everything about me has been well documented.

  But not everything.

  I was so worried about my back in 2004: It turned out I had a small stress fracture, and needed rest. There were times I would be in Bob’s office feeling broken down physically and emotionally. Whitney had endured back problems that seriously affected her career. I was scared and worried. Plenty scared, seriously worried.

  I can’t emphasize enough how, during all this, Bob was there for me. This is the side of him that doesn’t get depicted often in all the stories that have been written about us, which tend to focus on how it’s his way or the highway; this was the side that reminded me why I would never swim for any other coach. Bob made it plain how much he cared. He stayed positive. He sought, time and again, to reassure me. He would say, you’re fine, we’re going to get through this, we’re going to get your back taken care of, it’s all going to work out. Which, ultimately, it did.

  Later, in the fall of 2005, the first week of November, I was hanging out in Ann Arbor with a bunch of swimmers. I was not in a very good state of mind. I don’t remember why. Boys will be boys, I guess.

  In fact, I don’t recall very much about the entire thing except that we were at this guy’s house and I hit something with my right hand—maybe a post, maybe a wall. I don’t even remember why I hit it. I’m not aggressive like that. It was just a weird situation. To this day, I have no idea why I did it. But it happened.

  The bone underneath the pinky on my right hand broke in half. It popped, just like that. The bone almost came out of the skin.

  I put my left hand over it and tried to hold it in place.

  I called Keenan Robinson, a trainer at the University of Michigan I had come to trust and rely upon, and he helped me put it in a temporary splint, then got me to the emergency room.

  Keenan called Bob. Bob called me back a bunch of times on my phone. I didn’t answer. Bob called a girl I was seeing at the time, trying to get her to answer. It wasn’t until the next night that he finally got me on my cell.

  It was not a pleasant call. I have bad news, I said. Oh, God, he said. After that he said, we really need to get our act together, “we” meaning me. I know what I did was stupid, I said. I know I made a mistake. I can’t change it.

  Ultimately, I underwent surgery. Doctors fixed the break with a titanium plate and three screws. Keenan did an amazing job helping me with the therapy; the scar is hardly noticeable.

  Bob was amazed at how quickly I was able to come back. I rode the stationary bike hard until I was allowed back in the water; the day after Thanksgiving I was back at it.

  Fall and early winter are typically not big months on the swimming calendar and while obviously a certain number of people in Ann Arbor knew about the break, Bob and I didn’t advertise it.

  My second broken bone is far better known.

  Then again, the time pressure the second time around was very different.

  In the fall of 2007, after dinner one night at Buffalo Wild Wings in Ann Arbor, one of those restaurants with a sports theme, I was walking to my car. As I neared it, walking on the driver’s side, I slipped. I fell down and hit the ground. In reacting—you don’t really have time to think in this kind of situation—I put my right hand down to cushion the fall. I caught myself. Nothing hurt. Everything seemed all right.

  The next morning, Sunday, I woke up and it looked like there was a golf ball on my right wrist.

  I thought, this isn’t good.

  This can’t be good.

  This could be really bad.

  No way I was calling Bob. At least not first.

  I called Keenan and said, “Can you come over and look at something?”

  He replied, “What is it?”

  This was, after all, Sunday morning. It’s not like anyone would have been anxious to roll right over.

  “It’s like there’s this giant golf ball on my wrist. I slipped last night and fell.”

  A few minutes later, Keenan showed up. As soon as he started touching the wrist, started trying to manipulate it, I felt nauseous. Literally sick to my stomach. It was the same feeling I had when he had touched the hand two years before.

  I knew right then the wrist was cracked. Fractured. Broken.

  I started doing some quick math in my head.

  This was late October. The Games were the next August. Two full months left in 2007 plus seven months in 2008. Would there be time?

  Wait. The Trials were at the end of June. Two months in 2007, plus less than six months in 2008 to get ready. Would there be time?

  I was not sure. I worried that I might be done, not just for the Olympics, but for my entire swim career. I was a mess. In tears.

  Keenan said, we have to call Bob.

  Bob had decided that day that he was going to make soup. He had gone to Whole Foods and stocked up on vegetables. He was going to make himself a huge pot of sumptuous vegetable soup.

  Keenan called Bob. Bob told Keenan, put Michael on the phone.

  I was as upset as I could be. I told Bob, I think I just gave away gold medals. I guess it was a good try, I said. I’d had a good run. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to come back from this.

  Bob listened quietly.

  He said, the meet’s not next week. Let’s see what you can do. He also said, I was there for you in the beginning; I’m going to be here at the end, and however it ends up is how it ends up.

  After we hung up, I found out later, Bob threw out his soup. He suddenly had no appetite.

  Keenan took me to the emergency room. X-rays confirmed it was broken. At the hospital, I was asked for my autograph; I’m right-handed and couldn’t sign. So I was asked for photos. While hooked up to IV lines.

  The next day, Keenan, Bob, and I went to see the surgeon. One of the things about being at the University of Michigan, which after the incident two years before I knew full well, is that they have there some of the greatest doctors and nurses in the world. The surgeon said we had two options:

  Let it heal on its own, wh
ich would take a while. That’s what most people do, the doctor said. Your hand would be in a cast for maybe six weeks, he said.

  I said, what’s the other choice?

  Surgery, he said, the advantage of which would be that the bone would be put back into place then and there with a pin, and you’d simply wait for the stitches to come out. About ten days, he said.

  That was a no-brainer.

  Surgery it was. “You’re talking only one pin?” Bob said, mindful that the prior break had involved three screws and a plate.

  I said, “When’s the next available date?”

  They couldn’t schedule the surgery immediately; it would be a few days away.

  Meanwhile, Bob heard, “Ten days,” and thought, okay, maybe this isn’t the end of the world. What my clumsiness had done, he made clear, was eliminate my margins. Before the break, I maybe had some wiggle room in my schedule. Now I would have none.

  “You can still do this,” Bob told me. “But are you ready to listen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Starting right now,” he said, “you’re going to have to do every single thing I ask you to do. You’re going to have to do it my way.”

  I thought to myself, this is not going to be fun. But that’s not what I said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  I finally worked up the courage to call Mom and tell her, too. That is, I called during school hours, when I knew she would be working and wouldn’t have her cell phone with her, and got voice mail. Mom, I said, I’ve had this little incident on the curb; it’s okay, Keenan’s taking care of me; talk to you later.

  When Mom heard that, she said later, she thought, Oh, good God.

  We had gone to the doctor in the morning. That afternoon, per Bob’s instructions, I was on a stationary bike.

  For me, riding a stationary bike is one of the most boring activities imaginable. It’s horrible. One of the worst things I’ve ever done. Some people think swimming is boring or monotonous. Not me; swimming is fun. Riding a stationary bike is the least amount of fun possible. The thing was, though, I knew I needed to keep working out. The bike was making my legs stronger. Much as I didn’t want to do it, I did it. It was the right thing to do. I had given Bob my word. I was going to do exactly what he wanted, exactly how he wanted it done. I rode that bike every day until I underwent the surgery. Bob gave me a day, maybe two, and then I was back on the bike. A few days after that, I had my hand in a plastic bag, and I was back in the water, kicking.