2016 is a year that people want to forget and remember. They want to forget because of how many celebrities have died. They want to remember because of how many sports icons have walked away from the game. One of the major things that 2016 will be known as is the Year of the Retirement. MLB said goodbye to Alex Rodriguez and Freddy Garcia; the NBA said goodbye to Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan; the NFL bid farewell to Calvin Johnson, Peyton Manning, Marshawn Lynch, and others; the Wrestling world said goodbye to Daniel Bryan, the announcing world will be saying goodbye to Dick Enberg.
Now you can add the Olympics to that list.
While doing a Facebook Live Chat, Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps made a startling remark. He announced that the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio would be his final one. Michael Phelps owns many records as he has 23 gold medals and the most for one event with eleven in the 4 x 200 m freestyle. During the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, he broke US swimmer Mark Spitz’s record of 7 gold medals by winning eight during those games.
Being that Phelps owns many records with the Olympics, it makes complete sense to why he is retiring. When you own as many records as he does, you don’t need to accomplish anything else. He has a great legacy as he goes down as one of the greatest swimmers and Olympians All-Time. While the next summer games are not until 2020 when Tokyo hosts them, and he is confident that he won’t be in those games, I won’t believe it until those games happen.
Overall, Thank you to Michael Phelps for getting people who are not interested in swimming to watch swimming and congratulations on having a legendary swimmer career.