Michael Phelps does not look entirely comfortable with adulation. There’s a lesson in that. Ask him in a press conference about inflection points in an athlete’s journey, those times they tend to need the most help with mental health, and while he answers this is individual for everyone, he turns to a crowning achievement when he won his record eight gold medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He sounds a little like a mom remembering postpartum depression. You are supposed to be over the moon, and you are, but that passes too swiftly into something else. You find you’ve landed somehow, unexpectedly on the dark side, suddenly all alone. Is this all there is? What now? He says he’s just another person, human as everyone else. Problem is, we don’t believe it. No, you are a champion, freakishly talented in one made-up thing, swimming races with various strokes, 28 Olympic medals of which 23 are gold, over three dozen world records, on and on and on. If you forget, there’s always an emcee, a reporter, no shortage of fans seeking selfies, autographs or simply gaping to remind you. But I think I saw him out of his water, however briefly, in a strange state, trotted in front of a few TV cameras, print journalists and still photographers clustered around them, to offer a few words. At first he was at a loss, though that shifted quickly into interview mode. His swimming, his medals, his work promoting mental wellness. Our own Jack Singer asked him if he followed any particular Utah athletes, thinking about Winter Olympians. “Oh, man,” he said, a little abashed. “I was hoping you weren’t going to put me under the microscope right there. … For me, I can’t say. I’m not going to sit here and lie. So no, I don’t. I feel like a loser.” The exchange was humorous and I thought endearing under the words themselves. You had to be there. Not to gotcha an awkward moment for the great Michael Phelps. No. This is to observe that way more than words, here was a person squaring up to a fact of life that pops up routinely for us all, and routinely we try to cover up. He didn’t know. He’s not a winter sports guy. I saw then what he said he was at core, a human being who struggles every day with his own mental health. Well, I didn’t see all that. I just saw a fellow human being. This was my second favorite moment of a long night I had no idea was in store. I had dropped in to answer a media availability email from the Utah 2034 Olympics organizers at the Delta Center. I didn’t realize it was precursor to a gala with a thousand people for the Governor’s State of Sport Awards. The press availability was more revealing and important, to me, than his interview onstage during the event with Rowdy Gains, a warm companion who called all of Phelps’ races during the various Olympics. Gains is a three-time Olympic gold medalist himself who moved to Utah only months ago and now serves on the Utah Sports Commission. Onstage, Phelps was fully the superstar athlete answering familiar questions, offering familiar advice, reaching familiar insights if more humbly than most. This was performance Phelps, of course, even the parts revealing his own struggles and his life’s work now to help kids and athletes. He spoke about his routines, his mental wellness checklist, his personal mantra to focus on what he can control, “control your controllables.” He spoke about how much effort goes into making Olympic athletes as physically strong as possible. “What about mentally? What if we worked on both of these things the same?” he wondered in a practiced rhetorical voice. “Why not?” All great, and great insights on athletics and life. Still, I most appreciated the glimpse of the human being who didn’t know what to say. Maybe for the rarity. Knowledge we’re more alike at root than not. But my favorite moment came at the end of a night of such moments, every trembling acceptance speech before the crowd including Phelps and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, the celebration of athletes who see less of that than others, paying attention to who read robotically from the giant teleprompter across the arena from the stage and who looked everywhere else while owning the audience in their turn, a polite bodyguard who shooed me from my position next to the stage just as I wondered maybe 10 minutes into the show how they’d let me get that close. That was just before the governor spoke. I was chatting after the event with a volunteer near where I’d moved to a seat in the first row rising from the other side of the arena, a TV guy named Ron who shared my geeky love for the unpolished athletes who won statewide athlete of the year awards and honoring all the Utah Winter Olympians with Tom Kelly calling each out in full announcer voice to the stage as if introducing the Jazz starting lineup. So cool. Summer Olympian Chari Hawkins interrupted to shake our hands and introduce herself to two strangers. She joked that she was pretty good in a bunch of track and field events but not good enough to win in any one. So she was a heptathlete. She competed in the 2024 Olympics, finally, at the age of 33, downright elderly among her teammates. I joked I was that in my sport, basketball, good but never great — only at the high school level, while she was an Olympian! She laughed. “There’s that, yes.” Her moment in the Paris Games was made for ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.” The agony of defeat, with a twist. On the highest stage at the highest moment of her athletic life, she couldn’t clear the lowest high jump bar, which happened to be her best event, and scored zero right off the bat, all hope for a medal gone. She could quit right there or finish it out. You only had to meet her for a minute to know her choice. She represented the flip side of the coin from golden glory. No less inspiring. “I had the opportunity to do it sad, or I could do it happy,” she said. “So I was able to, kind of like practice, push past a lot of pain.” She exhorted us to watch her reality show, “Trainer Games,” on Prime and told us about her experience as a contestant. We were an audience of two — two totally rabid new fans of her. She competed for Utah State back in the day and moved to San Diego in her quest to make an Olympics team. “I made it when I was 33 for my first. And a lot of failures, a lot of failures. … I always say I’m the youngest I’ll ever be, and I’ll be saying that for the rest of my life,” she said. “It’s all a mental thing.” Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745. The post Journalism Matters: Olympians, like you and me appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less