Travel Blog

The man is a great swimmer, but who's been writing his material?

In the last few weeks I've seen him interviewed by Conan O'Brien and Rick Reilly. Each interview began with a discussion of his remarkable achievements and then, with obvious uneasiness, each interviewer brought up the unfortunate incident with the bong. Phelps' response to each was exactly the same, some meaningless drivel about the fact that he's 'made mistakes in and out of the pool and he's always been able to learn from them in the past.'

Then each interviewer, relieved to have gotten that messiness out of the way, moved on to happier topics. Case closed.

You didn't expect much from O'Brien, though as an interviewer he showed himself to be even more timid than Jay Leno, whose first question to Hugh Grant, after his arrest for picking up a prostitute, was the Everyman's: "What the hell were you thinking?"

But Reilly is the former Sports Illustrated columnist who confronted Sammy Sosa about steroid use. Couldn't he have at least followed up with: "Really, Michael - what sort of mistakes in the pool are you talking about?"

Athletes are usually not the most articulate people, and it's not easy to talk about a sport as boring as swimming. But couldn't Phelps say something that's not been scripted? I suppose, with all that money riding on endorsements, no. But wouldn't it have been refreshing if he had looked Reilly in the eye - after having already given O'Brien the spiel - and said: "You know, what I did was stupid. But it will look a lot less stupid when marijuana is legalized, as it should be."

But he's not going to get into politics. Even though, by regurgitating jargon, he sounds a lot like a politician.