Joseph Schooling & Beating Your Heroes

We’re about 14 months away from the 2024 Olympics in Paris. For me, this means the hype train is well underway. The only thing above football in the world of sports for me is the Olympics, and I can’t get enough of the narratives that build and break around the pursuit of human perfection. While I desperately try to avoid thinking about how long I have until anyone else starts caring about the Olympics again, please enjoy a story from the end of Michael Phelps’ career, as he earns a medal that was meaningful for more reasons than just being his very last.

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Michael Phelps overcame crippling depression and alcohol dependency to come back from retirement, fixed a 2-decade old feud with his father, had a son, got engaged, and in his final Olympics at Rio, won five more gold medals. But the most inspiring story about Michael from Rio is the story of his silver medal. He lost by small margin to Joseph Schooling of Singapore (he was the first ever athlete from Singapore to win a gold medal in any Olympic event).

After Michael’s second place finish (he actually tied with rivals Le Clos and Cseh for second, a first in Olympic history), this picture was taken:

Michael looks overjoyed even after missing the gold. That might seem surprising until you see this photo:

This is a photo from 2008 taken shortly before the start of the Beijing Games during the US Olympic Team’s training camp in Singapore. That year Michael won 8 golds in 8 events setting 7 world records and 1 Olympic record. That Olympic record was broken by the  young boy in the photo – Joseph Schooling, who was so shocked to see Phelps that day that he couldn’t hardly speak. After defeating his idol 8 years later he was similarly speechless.

In an interview after his win, Joseph said he could barely breathe and was completely overcome. Michael stayed with him until he calmed down and in an emotional moment Joseph asked Michael not to retire. Chad le Clos, Phelps’ biggest rival (Le Clos has beaten Michael in a couple of Olympic races), also asked him to stay in the sport for Tokyo in 2020; Chad says his swimming career is largely due to watching Phelps in the Sydney games.

Michael politely refused them both, while two other athletes had started chanting “four more years!” in the audience. He explained later in an interview: “I wanted to change the sport of swimming…with the people we have in the sport now I think you are seeing it.” Unfortunately, after Michael’s retirement and a postponement due to Covid, neither le Clos or Schooling would medal in the Tokyo Olympics.

But Joseph Schooling and Chad Le Clos aren’t alone in citing Michael Phelps as their Olympic inspiration. Take a look at this photo from 2006:

That 9 year old girl is Katie Ledecky, a long-distance swimming phenomenon, who was covered by media nearly as much as Phelps at Rio. The photo was taken when she went to meet Michael at an autograph signing 17 years ago. In an interview during the Rio Olympics, Katie said that she didn’t “know if anybody can ever match or carry the torch that Michael has carried for us.” That night she won the 800m by an other-worldly margin: 13 seconds. She won 4 golds and a silver in Rio, the silver coming from a relay. She is the second Olympian in history to win gold in the 200m 400m and 800m in one Olympics – not to mention she won the 400m by a margin of almost 9 seconds. Maybe she’s already picked that torch up – she went on to win two more golds and two silvers in Tokyo. She’s still just 25, and has her eyes set on Paris in 2024.

Singapore will celebrate Schooling’s win as a historic moment in their Olympic history, as well they should – and Joseph’s career and story are still being written. But for those of us studying Michael Phelps, his silver medal in the Rio 2016 100m Butterfly will represent more than a slightly-too-slow time for the gold. He shares the silver with Le Clos and Cseh,  his two long-time rivals, and the three of them recognize Joseph Schooling, gold medalist and symbol of the new generation, made stronger in the waters of competition they leave behind.