Michael Phelps is sprawled on a couch in a Lower Manhattan hotel, sporting a beard, a gray beanie
cap, a white T-shirt and Under Armour sweatpants and sneakers, an athlete in repose. He’s in New York to accept yet another lifetime achievement award for his triumphs in five Olympic Games, another chance for him and others to revel in his past glories. What Phelps wants to talk about now, however, is the future. “I’ve spent decades staring at that black line at the bottom of a pool,” he says.
“I’m ready to do something new. I’m ready to channel my competitiveness into something else.”
Phelps, 31, is four months removed from what he swears was his last Olympics. The second phase of his life has begun, he says, and it has two main parts: He wants to create a brand that burns brightly for decades to come, but he also wants to become a global champion for the causes that mean the most to him—swimming and the wellbeing of children.
On the brand side Phelps is, of course, well established as a corporate pitchman. Under Armour, Omega, Intel, Activision and Beats by Dre are among his well-known sponsors. (Some of the lesser known: Master Spas, Krave and Sina Sports.) At the height of these sponsorships he earned an estimated $7 million a year. Many of the companies are longtime partners and plan to stay that way. “We hope he’s with us forever,” says Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour, which signed Phelps in 2010.
But Phelps is not content simply to be the face of someone else’s brand. In 2013 he left his longtime sponsor Speedo, and the following year he started a swimwear line called MP. He found a partner in Aqua Sphere, a swimwear and swimming accessories company, which now sells Phelps-branded suits that range from $40 to $475. “I’d like to someday have the biggest and best brand in swimming,” he says.
His business role model is, of course, Michael Jordan, whose Nike Inc. Jordan Brand sold $2.8 billion worth of shoes and apparel last year.
Swimming obviously isn’t as merchandisable as basketball, but Plank says Phelps’ ambitions shouldn’t be dismissed: “Michael has that special trait, the ability to be clutch and win when it counts, which he demonstrated over and over at the Olympics. I think he can be the king of all things water.”
Phelps’ other main post-Olympics goal involves his foundation, which he started in 2008 with the $1 million bonus he earned from Speedo for his record-breaking eight gold medals in Beijing. His biggest initiative is the im program (“im” for “individual medley,” one of his strongest events, and for the affirmation “I am”). The program focuses on making children “water-safe.” (Drowning is the leading cause of injury-related deaths for kids ages 1 to 14 in the U.S. and the third leading cause worldwide.) Phelps’ mother made him take a water-safety course when he was a boy, and he says that’s the reason he became a competitive swimmer.
The im program has 104 teams in all 50 U.S. states and another 176 in 33 other countries, and through it 16,000 kids have learned how to swim (for three-quarters of them, the program was their first time in a pool). “I’d like for that number to be 50,000 someday soon and then 100,000,” Phelps says. “The goal is to get every kid in the world water-safe.”
To accomplish these dreams, Phelps will need to become a lasting global icon, no easy task for even the most successful Olympians. Jesse Owens, in the end, was more a powerful symbol than a brand. Muhammad Ali’s boxing career spanned two full decades after his Olympic gold in 1960. And Caitlyn Jenner remains famous four decades after decathlon heroics in Montreal but for reasons no one could have foreseen in 1976.
Yet Phelps was no ordinary Olympian. He began as a 15-year-old prodigy in the 2000 Games and provided a glimpse of the greatness to come in the 2004 Athens Games. Then came the triumph in Beijing in 2008 and the weary wins in London in 2012, followed by the drinking and depression and the stint in rehab. All of which culminated in the redemption in Rio in 2016. In the end Phelps had won an Olympic record 28 medals, all but 5 of which were gold.
That level of longevity and excellence in the Olympics has given Phelps the kind of global profile most American athletes lack. And with his longtime agent, Peter Carlisle, Phelps has been laying the groundwork for a global presence since the beginning of his career. He started visiting China and making deals there five years before the 2008 Games (the Chinese call him the Flying Fish). Phelps and Carlisle used the same playbook for Rio—he made four pre-Olympics visits to Brazil and has since signed a deal with the Brazilian media giant Grupo Globo. And he will soon embark on a tour of Vietnam, Ethiopia, South Africa and Latin America.
Phelps, of course, has been through this before, when he retired for the first time after the 2012 Games. “This time is different,” he says. “Back then I just wanted to dig the deepest black hole and be left alone.” Now “life is so different and so much better. I have Boomer [his 8-month-old son] and Nicole [his wife]. I have other things to worry about than just myself.”
Phelps says he travels three weeks out of every month, and at meetings he doesn’t just show up for the grip-and-grin but really dives in. “I’m actually sitting at the table now during the discussions, asking questions,” he says. “Some of this is self-reinforcing. I want to be out there now. If I isolate myself as I’ve done before, I know the road I’ll go down, and I know it won’t be pretty.”
A question remains: Is he really done competing? “Yes, definitely,” he says, while admitting that he said the same thing in 2012. The 2020 Olympics is out of the question, but Carlisle has been floating an intriguing scenario regarding the 2024 Games. “I think Michael is 100% sure he’s done right now,” he says. “But what if the 2024 Games are awarded to Los Angeles? And what if there was a spot open on a relay team?” Carlisle leaves the thought there, as any good agent would.
Phelps just smiles when this idea is brought up. “I’m happy now,” he says. “And I’m excited for what’s ahead of me.”

The Flip Turn

It’s almost 36 years since John Lennon died from an assassin’s bullet outside his home, The Dakota, in Manhattan, New York. Yet they still flock to mourn the Beatles guitarist, from Liverpool, at his memorial site in Central Park.
John Lennon, Bullet, Manhattan, New York, Memorial, Mark David Chapman, July 2016
It’s chilling to think how killer, Mark David Chapman, posed for a photo with Lennon, hours before he pulled the trigger. Chapman, who was a Lennon fan, was imprisoned for life and denied parole many times.
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Across the road from where Lennon was gunned down, his widow Yoko Ono built a 2.5-acre teardrop-shaped living memorial in Central Park. Their Dakota apartment overlooked the park where the couple often walked.
On Lennon’s birthday, October 9, 1985, Ono and thousands fans unveiled the memorial site and renamed it Strawberry Fields; the name of a song he wrote for the Beatles.
As a Lennon fan from Africa, I vowed to set my foot there before returning to the motherland in September. In my second month in New York, weekends passed without visiting the park. I had been promised tours of the Big Apple since I arrived but I stay on the other side of the Hudson River in Jersey City. All my colleagues are on other side in New York City and Manhattan.
At 6PM on a Saturday in May, I was caught up in the moment of despair as it seemed another weekend was going to waste, a text message beeped. It was Karsten Strauss, a colleague.
“Hi Thobile, (do you) still have time to hang out tomorrow? But first a question: are you a fan of John Lennon?”
“Yeah man, I am John Lennon groupie,” I replied.
Apparently Manhattan knows not Sunday rest and never sleeps. I took a train to Manhattan and followed instructions sent to my phone. Strauss was there waiting for me. We walked down a few miles and passed two guards in navy suits and matching marine caps at the gate of the Dakota apartment.
“Where did it happen, officer?” Strauss queried as we passed.
One guard, leaning on a sign that read ‘Authorized Persons Only Beyond This Point’, lowered his head and hit the ground with shiny black shoes. “Right here,” he replied.
As we entered the memorial, the walkway led to a small crowd taking photographs around the black and white mosaic circle with one word on it:  “Imagine”. The mosaic was a gift from the city of Naples, Italy.
Nearby, a busker strummed his guitar, very hard, playing a song I didn’t recognize; opposite him a grey-haired man in a stall sold souvenirs bearing Lennon quotes.
The excitement was overwhelming; I stepped to the mosaic and smiled to the camera with my African swagger. Unbeknown to me I had jumped the queue, I was embarrassed but I offered my sincere apology for the mishap. That’s not how I was raised. In the spirit of Lennon, peace was made.
Something about this memorial stirred thoughts of Africa. In 2007, South Africa mourned the death of a musician cut off in his prime. Reggae musician Lucky Dube was shot dead in front of his children as he dropped them off at a relative’s house in Rosettenville, Johannesburg. The man of sober habits – a non-smoker – died at the hands of carjackers.
Dube, born on a farm in Ermelo, Mpumalanga, was drawn to music after stumbling on instruments in a school cupboard. He released his first album in 1982; two years after Lennon died. He died 27 years after Lennon, and not much older, aged 43, with 21 albums and a record deal with Motown. Like Lennon, Dube carried a torch for peace.
The legacy of Lennon will be celebrated for many more decades in his adopted land. Dube, the man who stuck by his people and preached peace to the end, died with his good name and little else to remember him by other than his songs. There is no park, nor memorial, nor studio, to commemorate a man who meant as much to many Africans as Lennon ever did. Imagine.

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The Flip Turn

Imagine?