Fred Phelps (father)
On Thursday night last week when Michael Phelps added a 22nd Gold medal to his scintillating wall of fame, Google, the search engine, was buzzing as usual with one perceptible aberration. One of the trending topics searched was Fred Phelps, the Olympian’s father.
Phelps’ mother Debbie and coach Bob can be easily spotted on the pool touchlines- if you will, cheering on the Olympian who can probably only hear them for short intervals whenever he ephemerally sneaks out of water for a gasp of air. Michael’s privileged to have a happy, loving relationship with his mother.
What drives spectators crazy is wondering where Fred Phelps is and why he isn’t jumping up and down cheering on his son?
“Is my family perfect? Far from it. My parents had issues where they thought it was healthy to split. It wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t easy. But what we went through as kids made us as strong as we are. And now my father and I communicate. It’s not fixed. You don’t fix something like that. But it’s better,” Michael said.
The answer: Michael has had a complicated relationship with his father after his parents broke up when Michael was just 9. The divorce saw the responsibilities for raising Michael fall on his mother and his two sisters, who evidently couldn’t have done a better job.
Fred Phelps and son Michael remained in contact for a couple years until the swimmer’s career drove him apart from his father. This, needless to say, did not create a schism of any male influence as he always had love and guidance from his coaches, especially Bob Bowman.
“For me, not having a father always there was hard. I had Bob [Bowman], and I had Peter [Carlisle], these guys who acted as father figures,” Michael Phelps said “But deep down, inside, it was hard. That was something that was a struggle for me to talk about for a long time, even with friends or my mother. Getting that off my chest in therapy was this huge weight off my shoulders.”
