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Michael Phelps is arguably the greatest swimmer of all time and officially the most decorated Olympian of all time. However, since his retirement, he's opened the door for other swimmers, like perhaps Caeleb Dressel, to continue working towards achieving similar success, at least in some disciplines.
He retired once before deciding to return and add to his impressive medal collection. He owns 23 Olympic gold medals, the most by any person in history. His second retirement was final, with the swimmer insisting that he was done this time, in 2016.
At the time, he went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and opened up about retiring, joking that he was retiring to focus on running his infant son's Instagram account.
He opened up about being able to compete in the stands with both his wife and son, Boomer. Prior to his initial retirement, that wouldn't have been possible.
Fallon asked about the name Boomer, given that it is a fairly uncommon one. Michael Phelps answered:
"Honestly, we heard the name and we didn't want like a normal name. I brought it up to Nicole, and she was like, 'Oh, that's kind of cool, Boomer!'"
He continued:
"Boomer, boom! We had no second option. Once we picked that, it was done. He's definitely going to be the cool kid."
Phelps then admitted to running his son's account on Instagram, revealing that at the time, he had over 660,000 followers. The retired swimmer believes that this made his son one of the most followed babies in the world, and the cool name certainly didn't hurt that follower count.
Why did Michael Phelps retire twice?
Michael Phelps' retirement in 2016 was not the first time he had walked away from the sport. In fact, his initial retirement following the 2012 Olympics lasted about a year-and-a-half.
However, he ultimately did return to action, winning more gold medals and further cementing his legendary status. There were even rumors that he wanted to return at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics but it never materialized.
He returned to the pool after stepping away for one main reason: he felt that he had more left in the tank. Phelps had one of the longer careers in sports, so it was reasonable that he wanted to walk away before it ended.
He said to Jimmy Fallon in that video that he didn't want to look back in 20 years time and regret not competing when he had the chance. The physical ability to do so doesn't last forever, so Phelps needed to take advantage of it while he had it.
He won five gold medals and one silver medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, six medals he would not have if he'd stayed retired.
Clearly, he was still in his prime, because five gold medals in one Olympics is something most swimmers would love to have in their best year, not the years after they initially retired.
Had Michael Phelps walked away, his lead atop the Olympic medal leaderboards would be much slimmer. Larisa Latynina has 18 total, so 22, that the swimmer had prior to 2016 would be just ahead.
