RIO DE JANEIRO _ A completely transformed Michael Phelps came to his fifth Olympics determined to do it right.
If London 2012 was drudgery then Rio 2016 would be joyful, a final chance to savor his life as the greatest swimmer of all time, an amphibian Olympian unlike any other.
Phelps didn't intend to be audacious in Brazil like he was in Beijing, when he won eight gold medals in eight consecutive magical days. But he was anyway, winning four races before fatigue caught up with his 31-year-old body and he lost his final individual event Friday by .65 seconds to a kid from Singapore who can go to his grave saying he beat Michael Phelps.
Phelps touched in a three-way tie for silver with rivals Laszlo Cseh and Chad le Clos and shared the podium with them, which he thought was an amusing twist on his attempt to four-peat in the 100-meter butterfly. Phelps was closing on winner Joseph Schooling but he ran out of water.
He will strap on goggles one last time Saturday for the medley relay but he doesn't even plan to warm down afterward. Phelps insists he really is done, although Ryan Lochte has "guaranteed" that Phelps will be back for Tokyo 2020. And why not? He could just keep winning, another four, five, six golds, and the swimmer who hates to lose more than he loves to win could avenge the 100 fly loss as he did the 200 fly here.
It would be comforting to marvel at Phelps for another Olympics. We're so accustomed to seeing him on the blocks swinging and flapping those impossibly long arms as he leans into start position on the blocks, dolphin-kicking with those impossibly large feet, stroking through the water with those impossibly large hands and ripping off his USA cap to reveal those endearingly large ears. We're so accustomed to hearing the national anthem over and over during the first week of the Olympics.
But it would better if Phelps retires on top. Rather than grow stale and be taken for granted, he can leave the trail he blazed for the next generation of swimming stars, led by the new medal multiplier from Maryland, Katie Ledecky, who crushed the opposition and her own world record in the 800-meter freestyle Friday with a time of 8:06.68.
Think about it. Phelps has won 22 gold medals _ 13 in individual events, which broke Leonidas of Rhodes' 2,160-year record _ and 27 total. That averages out to 5.4 medals per Olympics. Almost all the 10,000 athletes here would be ecstatic to take home one bronze. If he was a country, he'd rank 38th all time on the medal table.
More remarkable than Phelps' sustained excellence at an advanced swimming age was his courage and honesty in the public eye at his fifth Olympics.
He let us in. He confessed that he'd lost his love of swimming by 2012. The years of training up to 90,000 meters per week _ that's 56 miles and 1,800 laps _ and the hours of concentrating on a black line in the sensory deprivation chamber of the pool had worn him down. So had the gargantuan expectations, made greater by his ambition and the coach who wanted to help him realize his goals, Bob Bowman.
"I'm not sure the world has ever seen who I am," Phelps said. "They saw me as a swimmer but not as a person."
The chlorine and the demands made him robotic. He was purposely dull and one-dimensional, to protect himself.
"I merely went from one meet to the next, one medal to the next, one record to the next," he said. "A lot went by in a blur.
"I've spent more than half my life in a swimming pool. That's nuts."
After two DUIs and therapy at a rehab center, Phelps became a new man.
In Rio, he was unafraid to show his affection for 3-month-old son Boomer, his fiancee Nicole Johnson, his mother, the father he was once estranged from, his opponents and Bowman, his mentor since age 11.
"I felt like a kid again, like when I was 18," he said. "That was the only reason I was able to get back to where I once was.
"Getting out of the pool takes more energy but standing on the podium and hearing the national anthem is as sweet as ever. When I hear the anthem so many memories are going through my head. Each time I hear it I'm in tears.
"I don't know what to say. It's been a hell of a career."
Farewell, Michael. Thank you.
And on your way out, be sure to tell Ledecky not to forget to have fun.
