Brand Phelps

Can the greatest olympian in history be as dominant out of the pool as he was in it?

- Tim Nudd

Michael Phelps had a better 2016 than you.

He got married. He had his first child. He starred in the year’s best ad—an elegiac masterpiece by Droga5 for Under Armour. And at 31, the planet’s greatest-ever swimmer went to his fifth and final Olympics, in Rio, seeking redemption—four years after a lackluster (for him) London 2012, and two years after a fraying personal life ended in a DUI arrest (his second) and rehab.

Redemption, he found. Phelps grinded out a storybook ending to his swimming career in Brazil, winning six gold medals and two silvers, putting his tally at a staggering 28 Olympic medals, and 23 golds. Just as important, he went out at an emotional and physical peak. He was in the best shape of his life and excited to be in the pool—a stark contrast to the motivational problems that haunted him before and after his first retirement, post-London.

“It’s been a crazy year, an honestly ridiculous year, one of the greatest years of my life,” Phelps tells me one late November afternoon in Manhattan. (He calls Paradise Valley, Ariz., home these days, and is visiting New York for USA Swimming’s Golden Goggle Awards.) “Coming back, going through some ups and downs away from the pool, and being able to finish my career on my terms—that’s all I wanted.”

You couldn’t have scripted it much better.

Except now, it’s all preamble. How the most decorated Olympian in history writes the rest of his life—the business career he envisions for himself, in the mold of a Jordan or a Jeter; his charity work; his family life; his efforts to grow the sport of swimming; his endorsement deals; and his own burgeoning MP brand—is entirely up to him.