Michael Phelps: The Untold Story of a Champion

by Bob Schaller, Jason Lezak (Foreword), Rowdy Gaines (Introduction)

A revealing biography of the Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps that includes exclusive interviews with his family, teammates, and friends and never-before-revealed details about his life.

Michael Phelps is an American sports hero, perhaps the greatest Olympic athlete the world has ever known. His unprecedented eight gold medals in the 2008 Summer Olympics have made him a superstar. But his journey to Olympic immortality is every bit as compelling as his achievements in the pool. From learning to cope with ADHD to the story of how Phelps became the greatest swimmer ever, Phelps' tale is told in full detail here for the first time.

The author, Bob Schaller, has known Phelps and his coach for more than eight years, and has extensively interviewed him, along with his mother, sisters, coach, and teammates. Filled with revelations, career statistics, and insightful analysis of how Phelps achieved the seemingly impossible, this is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn the complete story behind the legend.

Genres: Biography, Sports

249 pages, Paperback

First published October 21, 2008

Reviews

[Harshad Udayakumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as my knowledge goes, this is the first ever book that i read.I was fascinated by the cover page and the title that involves Michael Phelps's name and i wasn't bothered who the author was.So my reading started with this particular book.This is a well written book which has fantastic incidents of Michael's life.As a child he suffered from ADHD, so his mother being a teacher handled him very well.His two sisters were also very supportive.This book involves two halves or it describes two phases of Michael's life.The first half tells us about what goes on in his life until the olympics, his school life, then college, his sweet relationship with his mother and sisters and some of his coaches who trained him and other stuff like this.The second half describes the Beijing Olympics, his and the American team's journey throughout the games and some nail-biting finishes and things like this.But i have rated this book 3 on 5 stars for the only reason because the title says 'MICHAEL PHELPS:THE UNTOLD STORY OF A CHAMPION' and involves a lot about other players and doesn't contain any personal interview or such of Michael Phelps which i expected from this book.Though i am not disappointed i am not happy too after reading this.But overall this is a good read and people who love the sport of swimming or those who like Michael Phelps may love this book.Thanks to Bob Schaller for giving a nice book to readers.

[Kaleb Mayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This nonfiction novel is about the life story of Michael Phelps and how he became so successful. As a child he was really close with his family, he had great swimming coaches, and he was given a good education. Then when he was only 15 years old he competed in his first Olympic games. He went on to having an amazing Olympic career and now he's known as one of the greatest Olympians ever.

In my opinion I thought that the book was really informative and I really liked it. I learned a lot of new thing about him that I didn't know about. Anyone who likes the Olympics or swimming will enjoy this book. I rated this book four stars because it had a good story line but I felt at sometimes it had to much information.

[Madison Rife · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in Mr. Phelps’ career. It was a well done account of the work, talent and consistency it took for him to fight for every win he earned. Coach Bowman - Phelps’s coach was patient and determined to help Michael Phelps succeed in the best way he could. It was a well written novel about a great athlete. It was also one that encourages young swimmers to aim for the best and practice getting up, when their “best” was not yet reached.

[Dani · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the worst books that I ever read.

[Amit Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well good

[Jordan Hopper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bob Schaller wrote this book to tell the story of the Olympic Gold Medalist, Michael Phelps. As the title suggests, the purpose is to tell the “untold” story of his life and career as a competitive swimmer. Due to the author’s close relationship with the athlete, he is able to give readers exclusive interviews and details about Phelps’ life that other authors would not know.

The theme of the book is how life experiences has shaped a world renowned athlete’s success. This book gives insight into obstacles that Phelps overcame to get where he is today. Despite the medical diagnosis of ADHD, he learned to cope and overcome an impairment to achieve greatness in competitive swimming. Other instances, such as bad publicity for drug use also became an obstacle in his life. His mother and others, such as friends, coaches, and teammates, played a major role in his success.

The author’s descriptive narrative was an effective style in this book. Schaller was able to tell great stories of not only Phelps, but also others around him that kept readers interested. Schaller also incorporated some great quotes from athletes and other influential people in Phelps’ life. This kept me entertained throughout the book. For example, Schaller quotes Bob Bowman, a past coach of Phelps’: “It does make me feel pretty good because the most important thing we do as coaches is communicate...if you can’t get your message across or hear what the athletes are saying, I don’t think it works”. This resonated with me because I can hear my own coach saying this. And I fully agree with his statement. It kept me wanting to continue to read.

In my opinion, the book tells a good story. I would have liked the author to focus more on just Phelps, rather than other athletes in the story. It seemed there were more stories about others than there was about Phelps himself. Overall, it was a good read. I would recommend this to any athlete that has obstacles in their life to overcome in order to achieve success. It really is an inspiring story.

[Tim Lindner · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book 'Michael Phelps: The Untold Story of a Champion' is about Michael Phelps' unbelieveable trip to Beijing, China, winning 8 olympic gold medals in 8 competitions he swam.
The beginning of the book is pretty much about Michael's childhood and his family. It tells about his older sisters, who also had an impressive swimming carrer and his likings besides swimming. So he was an outstanding lacrosse player and also liked to play golf.
He qualified for his very first olympics in Australia's capital Sydney at the age of 15, where his effort brought him the gold medal in the 400 meters individual medley. After that he made it to some gold medals and world records at world championships and the olympic games of 2004 in Athens.
Then in 2008 he achieved something nobody had done since Mark Spitz in 1972 (winning 7 olympic golds). He competed in 8 different events (5 individuals and 3 relays) and winning all golds.

Reading this book was kind of disappointing at a certain point because it was not about Michael Phelps anymore.
The book is splitted up into two parts. The first part tells about the time before 2008 and the second one is about the separate days of the olympic games 2008.
My expactations for the book were that it would tell about the thoughts and the feelings Michael had prior to his races. It actually told about some of those but the most time I read about his rivals and teammates such like Ryan Lochte, Aaron Peirsol or Ian Thorpe who also won in significant events.
All in all the book is mostly a biography and listing of Michael Phelps' achievments at olympic games and world championchips it does not deliver insight into his personal thoughts, though.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book sucked. I got about 50-60 pages in and got bored and stopped reading. The beginning had bits and pieces about Michael from his family and his coach and from him himself but nothing that I couldn't find out from reading an interview about him on espn.com or looking him up on wikipedia. The thing that really turned me off was a section talking about Michael's injuries before the 2008 games. In the book the author talks to a couple of Phelps' teammates at Michigan who don't want their names out there because of trouble they could get in that say that he punched a wall on a porch when leaving a party and that's how he broke his wrist, not falling when getting in the car like he told reporters.

The thing I thought was strange about this was that the teammates thought it wouldn't have been a big news story if Phelps just "told the truth" which is just preposterous. He was the most talked about swimmer going into that Olympics and he hurt himself less than a year before. People like to freak out about anything and no matter what happened there would have been articles about it. The second thing that I thought was odd was that Phelps himself said that he did hurt himself in that exact way but not in 2007. That was a year or so earlier, hit a porch and instantly broke a bone in one of his fingers. Either the author didn't know about that at the time or he just didn't research enough or he just wanted a gossipy story. From what I read of the book the author seemed to repeat the facts of Michael's races a lot over and over again and go off on tangents for a looonnnggg time about other swimmers that I really don't care that much about.

[Georgiacyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was just ok. The format was somewhat unorganized and repetitive. It really did not provide much insight into Michael Phelps that could not have been obtained from simply watching coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games. Much of the book had nothing to do with Michael Phelps. It was random facts about and interviews from swimmers (and their families) of the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Olympics. The quoted interview statements could have and often should have been paraphrased, as there was a lot of poor grammar and there were some out of context statements. The author didn't provide any depth into many things that I would fully expect in this type of book, e.g. the injuries that Michael Phelps had to fight through to achieve his goals. Most swimmers only get to trials/finals meets. The Olympics is a pre-lims/semi-finals/finals meet; and, the author did not address the differences. There was some conflicting information. Some statements were just plain ignorant, e.g. stating that one of the swimmers has temporarily considered joining the Navy Seals, as if you just go down to your local recruiting office and sign up for the Seals. Overall, this was a very "bubble gum" book that seems to have been rushed to the shelves without the level of research and editing that I would expect.

[Nikita · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this to be a terribly written biography. When I read about someone with stellar achievements, I want to know more about their life, their challenges and their motivations. This book was so superficial on all counts that I would rather have simply read the Olympics stats. Because it didn't quite achieve any more than that, IMHO. I mean, if Michael and all his family felt his time in college and going away were incredibly formative, there has to be something more than 'He learned to buy grocery all by himself and do his own laundry' to give us insight into how he grew! The incident about his goggles filling up and how he still won the race was poorly presented. It was one para. ONE para for something that could be such an insightful commentary on excellence, training and focus! And then others have already written about unnecessary interviews, digressions and repetitions.

This book could learn from Open, which remains one of my favourites. It truly makes you feel you got to know about Agassi as a person and what shaped his performance and life.

A wasted effort, really.

[Matthyas]

The Michael Phelps: The Untold Story of a Champion by Bob Schaller was an inspiring book about the struggles Michael Phelps had to go through in order to overcome the challenge of achieving 8 gold medals in order to, not only match Mark Spitz's record, but to beat it. I enjoyed the book because of the interviews and quotes that the author used when he had interviewed swimmers who raced against Phelps and the swimmers who swam with him in his relay. I would recommend this to any swimmer or big swimmer fan.

[Hannahcharlton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This biography was very disappointing. I felt as though the biography focused more on Phelps' teammates and family more than phelps himself. I found myself extremely bored throughout the Novel. I would not recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about Michael phelps.

[Jonathan Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it was a great story and I learned all about Michael Phelps and how he grew up and worked for a chance to be in the olympics.

[Mario Hernandez · Rating 2 out of 5]

The topic is great and I did learn a few things about Michael Phelps, but this author was horrible! I have never seen sloppier writing then this. The author is so boring.

[Alana Aubin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting content... I enjoyed the insights into the lives of Michael and other Olympic swimmers. Unfortunately the book is poorly written. It is quite repetitive and very disorganized.