A "Black Eye" For The Speedo LZR

[California Dolphin]

After winning a record number of Gold Medals in the Olympics, Michael Phelps became a poster boy for the Speedo LZR and a symbol of the tech suit revolution.

However, he's now getting a lot of bad press for repeated drunk driving:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2014/10/05/michael-phelps-dui-arrest-time-away-swimming/16762427/

For all the tech suit haters, it's taken a long time to get revenge on those horrible body suits.

However this is a excellent example of the saying "Karma's A Bitch". :eek:

[Torchwatch]

How the mighty fall.
Any fool can drink and drive and sometimes the famous act like fools.

[PSDave]

It is sad. Some people gain some notoriety through one thing or another (sports, TV, movies etc) and have no idea how to handle it. If they had personal ethics and a core of real friends and family to lean on they wouldn't end up being the trophy guest at parties etc and start to think they are the wonder person the press has portrayed and impervious to the realities of life.Hopefully this is a bump in the road and not slide to the end.

[Dooley67]

I'm sure that Michael Phelps was pressured by His PR people to check into rehab. But, be that as it may, he has to be given credit for agreeing and recognizing that he has a problem with alcohol. Remember, he's an adult with ADHD and the correlation between ADHD and substance abuse is quite high. One can only feel for a person who has everything, money, notoriety, success, and can't hold his personal life together. I for one hope that he is successful in getting sober and makes sobriety a focal point of his life so he can fully enjoy what he has rightfully earned.

F67

[shaulis]

I hope this won't derail his run for the 2016 Olympics. He hasn't been as good as he had hoped to be before he claimed to retire from swimming. Hopefully the program he enters will help him get what he needs.

[California Dolphin]

Phelps is just one example of how sports figures engage in reckless behavior.

O.J. Simpsons double murder*** and armed robberies, Michael Vick's dog fighting, and Jim Rice's punching out his fiancé, etc. are a prime example of how "easy money" can corrupt and turn people into spoiled brats.

*** Although Simpson got out of the double murder rap, the scientific evidence (the victim's DNA on the bloody glove) indicates he was in fact the perp!!!

[Torchwatch]

BBC Radio 4 reports this morning that Michael Phelps has been banned for 6 months and will miss the World Championships next year.
It seems that the pressures of being World and Olympic Champion have been too great for him.
I hope that he will be able to return to swimming even if he retires as a competitor.
While he has some spare time maybe he should read Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas, about a young swimmer who breaks in the Commonwealth Games and falls into alcoholism and crime, or maybe he should watch the 2nd TV series of Waterboys in which a banned and disgraced coach is pushed into helping a non competitive boys synchronised swimming team; the experience renewing his will to live.

[Swimmboy]

I wish Phelps the best in his rehab program. He is an amazing athlete, has done wonders for the sport of swimming, and I hope we will see him in Rio in 2 years. He did a stupid thing - spent something like 8 hours in a gambling casino (he has been a poker player for years), probably sipping and drinking booze for most of the time, and got drunk - then decided to drive! Duh!
About the Speedo LZR suit - if I remember correctly, that was the only tech suit that actually met the FINA suit requirements and was not banned (until the new rules about no fabric above the navel or below the knees were made). Many of those high-tech suits (like the Jaked suits) contained rubber-like fabric that aided in flotation, which was illegal. The LZR suits were fabric that did not aid flotation - that was why it was amazing when he beat Cavic in their 2009 World Championship race in Rome...