My story this weekend about Michael Phelps’s postcompetitive life as an informal counselor to some of sport’s biggest stars, including his close friend Grant Hackett, the Australian distance swimming ace, and the golfer Tiger Woods, took the better part of two days to report — and 15 years to make happen.
My first one-on-one interview with Phelps took place in 2002, at the swimming nationals in Fort Lauderdale, when I was a sports columnist for The Palm Beach Post. He was on a massage table having the fatigue kneaded out of his muscles. He was squirming, and not just from the pressure applied by the masseuse.