Sports Books | Phelps describes achieving, living Olympic glory

"No Limits: The Will To Succeed"

By Michael Phelps with Alan Abrahamson

Free Press, 240 pages, $26.00

How huge is Michael Phelps?

Big enough for musician Lil Wayne to hand the Olympic swimmer an autographed iPod with 40 unreleased cuts, including a track titled "Michael Phelps." Just one of the perks Phelps is still awed by as the reality of his historic Beijing Olympics continues to settle in.

The 23-year-old's new book — "No Limits: The Will To Succeed" — details those accounts, along with insightful looks back at the races that earned Phelps eight gold medals, surpassing Olympian Mark Spitz's record of seven. But the book, which caused huge lines and teenaged tears at its launch in New York earlier this month, doesn't dive into much drama or intimate details about the swimmer himself.

So if you're looking for why Phelps isn't close with his father, Fred, you'll have to dig up newspaper reports. Or cope with Phelps' offering of "my father moved out of the house when I was 7," in the book written with author Alan Abrahamson. "As time went on, we spent less and less time together. Eventually, I stopped trying to include him in my activities and he, in turn, stopped trying to involve himself in mine."

Phelps tells the reader about his bout with ADHD, using swimming as a release, and his "embarrassment" regarding his November 2004 DUI when he received his first car after the Athens Games — a 2005 silver Range Rover.

"I felt I'd gone from seemingly being on top of the world to being in the deepest black hole on the face of earth," said Phelps, who paid a $305 fine and completed community service after being stopped after rolling through a stop sign following a party where the swimmer says he had three beers.

Yet, it would be interesting to read more about how a kid from North Baltimore gets deep into rap culture, needing to listen to Lil Wayne's "I'm Me" on the blocks in the Water Cube before setting all of those records.

Only knowing the sales of the genre in suburban America, it's not hard to figure how the hip beats made their way to Phelps' ears. Especially in an East Coast city that found itself as the backdrop of the hit cable show "The Wire."

"When I hear Lil Wayne do that song ["I'm Me"]," Phelps writes, "I hear him saying, 'I'm my own individual, and that's me.' "

As for the fame that continues to shower the Olympian, who was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, Phelps doesn't figure to ever get used to it. His book will help any athlete learn determination to succeed in any pool, but Phelps will probably need maturity before he can really offer advice on how to handle mega celebrity status.

Phelps, who helped USA Swimming nearly double its numbers in youth swimmers across the country, did recognize it the instant it happened, however.

"In those moments after we'd won the medley, it dawned on me that my life abruptly moved into a new and completely different phase," he wrote. "President Bush called and said, 'If you can handle eight gold medals, you can handle anything.' "

Jayda Evans: 206-464-2067 or jevans@seattletimes.com