From: Favorite Hunks & Other Things
Besides being incredibly hot, doesn't Michael Phelps devilish grin turn you on? Hot and very cool! Michael turns 29 today.
Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985) is an American swimmer and the most decorated Olympian of all time, with a total of 22 medals. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals (18, double the second highest record holders), Olympic gold medals in individual events (11), and Olympic medals in individual events for a male (13). In winning eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, Phelps took the record for the most first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games. Five of those victories were in individual events, tying the single Games record. In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four golds and two silver medals, making him the most successful athlete of the Games for the third Olympics in a row.
Phelps is the long course world record holder in the 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly and 400-meter individual medley as well as the former long course world record holder in the 200-meter freestyle and 200-meter individual medley. He has won a total of 71 medals in major international long-course competition, totaling 57 gold, 11 silver, and 3 bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, and the Pan Pacific Championships. Phelps's international titles and record-breaking performances have earned him the World Swimmer of the Year Award seven times and American Swimmer of the Year Award nine times as well as the FINA Swimmer of the Year Award in 2012. His unprecedented Olympic success in 2008 earned Phelps Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year award.
After the 2008 Summer Olympics, Phelps started the Michael Phelps Foundation, which focuses on growing the sport of swimming and promoting healthier lifestyles. He continues to work with his foundation after the 2012 Olympics, which he has said will be his last. In April 2014, Phelps announced he would come out of retirement, and would enter an event later that month.
Phelps was born and raised in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood of Towson, Maryland, located just north of Baltimore. Michael is the youngest of three children. His mother, Deborah Sue "Debbie" (née Davisson), is a middle school principal His father, Michael Fred Phelps, is a retired Maryland state trooper who played football in high school and college and tried out for the Washington Redskins in the 1970s. Phelps's parents divorced in 1994, and his father remarried in 2000. His ancestry includes English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and German. Phelps graduated from Towson High School in 2003.
Phelps began swimming at the age of seven, partly because of the influence of his sisters and partly to provide him with an outlet for his energy. When Phelps was in the sixth grade, he was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). By the age of 10, he held a national record for his age group, and Phelps began to train at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club under coach Bob Bowman. More age group records followed, and Phelps's rapid improvement culminated in his qualifying for the 2000 Summer Olympics at the age of 15 and becoming the youngest male to make a U.S. Olympic swim team in 68 years. While he did not win a medal, he did make the finals and finished fifth in the 200-meter butterfly.
At the World Championship Trials for the 2001 World Aquatics Championships, on March 30, Phelps broke the world record in the 200-meter butterfly to become, at 15 years and 9 months, the youngest man ever to set a swimming world record, breaking the record previously held by Ian Thorpe when he lowered the 400-meter freestyle world record at 16 years, 10 months. At the World Championships in Fukuoka, Phelps broke his own world record in the 200-meter butterfly en route to becoming a world champion for the first time.
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