Lets take this out of the pool. Decorated olympian Michael Phelps is finding a way to make a difference. My dad was a swimmer throughout his whole child and achieved many things. I have been told many stories and swimming has become a sport that I truly love, and Michael Phelps has definitely been and idol of mine. He is a truly inspiring worldwide athletic icon and is now moving on to the next chapter in his life. Phelps was born and raised in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood of Towson, Maryland, located just north of Baltimore. He started swimming at the age of seven because of the influence of his sisters. By the age of 10, he held a national record for his age group, and Phelps began to train at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club under lifelong coach Bob Bowman. He rapidly improved and at 15 became the youngest male athlete to ever qualify for the olympics. While he won no medals this achievement skyrocketed his career and at the next olympics he 8 medals, 6 of which were gold. The rest was history allowing him to be the most decorated olympian of all time with 22 medals. Phelps retired in 2012 after the London olympics and left behind a true legacy. Now in this next phase of his career he has decided to use his success to help and inspire others.

Michael Phelps has invested in and gave support to several different charities including Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, Robert F Kennedy Memorial, and BID 2 BEAT AIDS. But on top of this he has even started his own. He took his $1 million bonus from Speedo that he earned by winning his eight gold medals and founded the Michael Phelps Foundation, which partners with Special Olympics and Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Their first initiative was Michael Phelps traveling across America to inspire children of boys and girls clubs to reach their goals with with his Dream, Plan, Reach message. They have now developed the IM program for Boys & Girls Club members as well as Special Olympians throughout the world. This program encourages participating in health and fitness activities for children. With this foundation Michael is empowering the less fortunate and allowing for them to achieve everything that he has. Michael wrote that the pool his giving him the chance to have fun, stay safe, healthy, work hard, and gain confidence. Now he wants to give back. He wants to grow the sport of swimming so people have that too.

With this second stage of his life. He has put away his fame to help others. In order to do what he has done with his charitable work this was something that he needed to do. Unfortunately Phelps late fame get to his head and was arrested twice for driving under the influence and in 2009 a photo was found of Phelps using a waterpipe, a device used for smoking tobacco or marijuana. Although these were bad things that occurred, they changed him as a person. He learned that along with becoming famous, publicity followed. So anything he did was told to the world, making this events just more tragic. Nothing has occurred since accept for gold medals and charity. He used these events to encourage him to be better and have the right kind of publicity.  He has used a large portion of earned profit just to give an opportunity to someone else and his created the right new image for himself.

Michael phelps has pushed through many challenges in his life to become a true inspiration. You may say he is a bad guy but I don’t see that to be possible. The bad things he has done has just made him more of an inspiration to show that you can change yourself.