Welcome back, Michael: Phelps’ 3-month suspension is over, so it’s time to get back in pool

Michael Phelps ready to get back in pool and race

BALTIMORE — Michael Phelps heard all the jokes, dealt with all the criticism, read all the tabloid reports about his supposed party-boy lifestyle.

Now, it’s time to get even, in the one place where he has the last word.

The pool.

After resisting the urge to quit and serving a three-month suspension handed down by USA Swimming after an embarrassing picture showed him inhaling from a marijuana pipe, Phelps is preparing for his first competition since winning eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.

When he competes at a meet in Charlotte, N.C. next week, he’ll certainly have plenty of motivation. Phelps is still seething a bit about how an admittedly “stupid mistake” led to such a dramatic fallout — and plenty of ridicule for an athlete who was celebrated after his record showing in China.

“When you find out things that have been said and done, for me it is sort of a factor,” Phelps said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, coinciding with the end of his suspension. “When you say something about me, more than likely I’ll be able to overcome whatever you say. I know I’ll be more satisfied than you’ll ever be at the end.”

Phelps didn’t always feel so defiant. When he was at his lowest, unsure if he wanted to return to swimming, he sat down with a pen and a piece of paper.

“I wrote out the pros and cons of swimming,” he said, “and quitting.”

In the end, swimming won out.

“What am I doing even thinking about quitting?” Phelps asked himself. “I’m 23 years old. I’m not retiring at 23. I have four more years to my career. I still have things I want to accomplish.”

He called longtime coach Bob Bowman on March 1 — Bowman remembers the day vividly — and said simply, “I’m doing it.”

“I was not really concerned whether he would quit or not,” Bowman said. “I was concerned that if he did quit, that he did it for the right reasons. Otherwise, it would just be a joke. I have told him, ‘You’ve done all there is to do. If you quit today, you’re the greatest of all time. You can walk away.’ But I did think it would be bad if he walked away because of this thing. He should go on his own terms.”

Always one to needle his most famous athlete, Bowman couldn’t resist making a joke about the end of the suspension, which limited Phelps to training only and made it tougher to stay motivated.

“Oh, good,” Bowman said. “He can go to a meet tonight.”

Phelps looks ready to race. He’s lost about 20 pounds of post-Beijing weight and gotten back into a six-day-a-week training regimen. He went through a rigorous three-hour workout Tuesday at Loyola College in his native Baltimore — two hours in the pool, another hour in the weight room.

“I’m happy to have some structure back in my life,” Phelps said.

In Beijing, he broke Mark Spitz’s 36-year-old record of seven gold medals and became the winningest Olympian ever with 14 golds in his career. But the photo of him attending a party in South Carolina during a lengthy break from training cost him one major sponsor and threatened to ruin his image.

“It was a stupid mistake that I made,” he said. “But I’ll have what I’ve accomplished in and out of the pool for the rest of my life. I’m satisfied with what I’ve done.”

Phelps said the whole experience has “shown me who my real friends are. It’s also given me a lot of time to think. Pretty much since Beijing ended, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.”

Once he got that resolved, Phelps returned to the plan all along — to keep swimming through the 2012 London Olympics. Although he’s not going to attempt eight gold medals again, he will continue to do a program that would be exhausting to most swimmers.

In Charlotte, he’ll swim five events: the 50-meter freestyle, 100 free, 200 free, 100 backstroke and 200 butterfly. Only two were on his record-breaking program in Beijing, the 200 free and 200 fly.

He will likely attempt to qualify for three individual events at this summer’s world championships in Rome, which would put him in line to swim six events if he’s on all the relay teams.

“I’m feeling good in the water and swimming some decent times in practice,” Phelps said. “But I have no idea what to expect in the meet. I’m going in open minded.”

As for his life away from the pool, Phelps wouldn’t discuss tabloid reports that he’s dating Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who made headlines of her own last month when she finished runner-up in the Miss USA pageant. Some thought her opposition to legalizing same-sex marriage, which came in response to a question, may have cost her the title.

“She’s a friend of mine,” Phelps said. “But my private life, I want to keep to myself.”

That said, he can certainly sympathize with what Prejean is going through.

“It’s tough,” he said. “I’m sure it’s not fun for her. But we’re in America. We have freedom of speech. If she feels that way, she can say it.”

As for tabloid reports of his supposedly heavy partying, Phelps rolled his eyes and said nearly everything written about him was false. Specifically, he denied a report detailing a wild night in New York City.

“The only thing I can do is laugh about it,” he said. “Come on, I do have some common sense.”

Not that he hasn’t had some high-profile stumbles in his life. After the Athens Olympics, where he won six gold medals and two bronzes, Phelps pleaded guilty to driving while impaired.

“I know I have not been perfect by any means,” he said. “But I have learned from all of my mistakes. That’s all you can ask for.”

During his workout Tuesday, Phelps gave a brief glimpse of the new stroke he’ll try out in the 100 free, a windmill motion with his arms that Bowman hopes will provide more speed. Away from the pool, the swimmer mercilessly picked on one of his five training partners, fellow Olympian Katie Hoff, and needled Bowman when the coach gave out some wrong information about the next day’s schedule.

“At least the athletes know what we’re doing,” Phelps said sarcastically.

“It’s the old me, the normal me,” he said. “I’m coming in, working hard and taking steps toward my goals.”