Michael Phelps Never Really Retired

By Andrew Fisher @AndrewFisherRS on April 14, 2014

His mother called it. Michael Phelps is not retiring after all.

If you remember back to the conclusion of the 2012 London games, it was then when Mrs. Phelps said that she just couldn’t see her son retiring from swimming. She jokingly said that he’d have to come back at least for a relay race at the 2016 Rio games. Well, it appears Phelps could be preparing for much more than that.

The greatest Olympian of all time is set to return to the pool later this month at an event in Mesa, AZ. But his coach, Bob Bowman, says that it doesn’t mean Phelps is back for good:

“I think he’s just really enjoying it. He enjoys the training and being physically fit. He just kind of wants to see where he’s at. It’s more really for fun. It’s been nice for me to see him swim just for the joy of it really.”

Anyone buying that? I know I’m not.

Sure, Phelps is going to gauge where he’s at following this meet, but we all know what the end goal is. He’s trying to make it back to the Olympics. If you’re a fan of the USA, that’s a good thing.

There was really no reason for Phelps to ‘retire’ in the first place. We could all see that he was still near the top of his game and that it was really more a matter of him being burnt out. Who could blame him? But as his mother expected, after an extended period of time out of the pool, his passion is returning.