Michael Phelps offered his support for Simone Biles with a powerful message about mental health
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Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympian of all time and was hired by NBC to give his analysis on swimming at the Tokyo Olympics. But last night he offered his most important message of the Games and it had nothing to do with the sport in which he won 28 Olympic medals.
Instead, it was about Simone Biles and the importance of protecting and working on your mental health.
I could say a bunch of words about this but I think it’s better just to hear from Phelps himself. Over the past five years he’s been incredibly open with his mental health struggles and the work that he has done on himself and that openness has helped a lot of people.
You can watch the video of Phelps here, but this was his message:
“The Olympics are overwhelming. There’s a lot of emotions that go into it – I mean, I could talk to you about this for an hour.
“I think athletes, and Olympic athletes in general, talking about weight of gold – we need someone who we can trust. Somebody that can let us be ourselves and listen; allow us to become vulnerable. Somebody who is not going to try to fix us. We carry a lot of weight on our shoulders and it’s challenging – especially when we have the lights on us and all these expectations that are being thrown on top of us. It broke my heart but also if you look at it, mental health over the last 18 months is something that people are talking about.”
He continued by talking about the importance of asking for help.
“We’re humans. We’re human beings. Nobody is perfect, so yes, it’s OK to not be OK. It’s OK to go through ups and downs and emotional rollercoasters. But i think the biggest thing is we all need to ask for help sometimes, too, when we go through those times. For me, I can say personally it was something that was very challenging – it was hard for me to ask for help. I felt like i was carrying – as Simone said – the weight of the world on your shoulders. So yeah, it’s a tough situation.
“I hope this is an eye-opening experience. I really do. I hope this is an opportunity for us to jump on board and to even blow this mental health thing even more wide open. It is so much bigger than we can ever imagine. Look, for me when I started on this journey five years ago I knew it was big. I knew it was going to be challenging. Five years into it now – it’s even bigger than I can comprehend. So this is something that is going to take a lot of time, a lot of hard work, and people that are willing to help.”
He closed it by talking about his foundation and working with kids at a young age to teach them about the importance of mental health and asking for help when you need it.
“With the foundation it’s so important, especially to teach kids at a young age to take care of their physical and mental health. You guys hear me talking about that so much- if we’re not taking care of both, how are we ever expecting to be 100 percent.”
That was some very powerful stuff from Phelps and it was great to hear it from such a legend.
Quick hits: Ledeky dominates first-ever 1,500 meters… Aaron Rodgers’ amazing entrance to Packers’ camp… Arians rips wristbands report.
(AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
– Speaking of swimming legends, Katie Ledecky absolutely dominated the first-ever women’s 1,500-meter freestyle and won another gold medal.
– Aaron Rodgers casually reported to work on Tuesday and NFL fans had lots of jokes about his tremendous outfit.
– Bucs coach Bruce Arians blasted a report about his team wearing vaccination wristbands in an expletive-filled rant.