Phelps Won't Be Tiger as Swimming World Statesman: John Helyar

Commentary by John Helyar

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- There's no doubt Michael Phelps will leave Beijing to the sounds of cheers and of cha-ching. He gave the summer games a big lift; now he'll do the same for his net worth.

The $1 million bonus from Speedo, for breaking Mark Spitz's gold-medal record, is just the beginning. Stack up all the Benjamins from all his endorsement deals and they'd overflow an Olympic pool.

The question is: Will Phelps also provide a big lift to his sport? It's sure happened before. In 1984, Mary Lou Retton vaulted to gold and inspired masses of misses to pull on leotards. In 1994, Nancy Kerrigan's sore-kneed near-gold performance sparked a figure-skating surge.

This is a new millennium and a new generation. Sure lots of kids have been glued to their TVs each night for the latest Phelps heroics. That no longer means they'll be swarming to nearby pools the next day to join swim teams and be like Mike. Lotta kids prefer to be glued to Game Boys.

Phelps isn't an inspiration to them, just another action hero. July brought them Batman at the movies; August the Dolphin-man on TV. The Peacock Network was transformed into the Phelps Network: All Mike, All the Time. Now that run's over and Mike's sport can't take ensuing benefits for granted.

Helping Swimming

Chuck Wielgus, chief executive officer of USA Swimming, is not. The sport's national federation must work hard to leverage Phelps's big medals haul into big gains for swimming. And it may have to do so without much help from Phelps.

In an ideal world, the hero of the moment would be the chief ambassador and promoter for his sport. Who better to beckon a wave of swimmers to gain the sport more exposure between Olympics.

This is a world when the toast of Beijing mounts a starter block for a new life as an A-List Celebrity. These are uncharted waters with unprecedented demands and opportunities. As Wielgus puts it, ``He could become bigger than the sport. He could become a sports celebrity, not a swimming celebrity and kind of move away from the sport.''

Well sure, Spitz preferred hustling posters of himself to promoting the sport after the 1972 games, but we want to believe better of Phelps. He's a big winner who nonetheless appears to have a lot of little kid in him.

``He seems genuine,'' says Scott Sanford of Davie-Brown Talent, a Dallas agency that advises companies about the marketing appeal of athletes and other celebrities. ``He's dominant but not overly cocky. His appeal is built on winning but also on his reaction to (teammate) Jason Lezak's winning lunge.''

Shelf Life

Most Olympians have short shelf lives as endorsers, for they soon vanish. Sanford believes Phelps will be a rare one, like Retton, who combines a great Olympic feat with a great personality and has longevity.

Still, Phelps will be at his pitchman peak over the next six months, which is why Wielgus would sure like a piece of him. The sport has been treading water. USA Swimming's membership spiked 7 percent after the 2004 Athens Olympics, but it typically rises only about 2 percent per annum.

Wielgus doesn't think Phelps is a transformative figure for his sport to the extent Tiger Woods was for his. ``Golf is on TV 40-plus weeks a year and Tiger is playing 20-plus times a year,'' he says. ``With swimming, you only get a mass TV audience once every four years, at the Olympics. I hope that changes after Beijing, but that's the way it is now.''

`Splash Bash'

There are sure lots of potential great ripple effects from Phelps's performance and Wielgus is sure doing what he can. During the games' first week, USA Swimming threw 700 ``U.S. Olympic Splash Bash'' parties across the country. Hosted by local swim clubs and featuring the Beijing swim races on big- screen TVs, they were a splendid recruiting vehicle.

Wielgus himself has been in Beijing, schmoozing and networking. Among other things, he's lobbying NBC officials to carry some of the major world and national swimming championships between the Olympics. It's pretty much the same cast of American swimmers, after all, which America has gotten to know and love.

Wielgus would also like to take advantage of the rise in traffic to swimming Web sites during the Olympics. USA Swimming has partnered with Wasserman Media Group to create a slick site called swimnetwork.com. The hope is that the people who first came for Olympic news and photos -- and visitors have doubled during the games -- will return for sticky content like a social networking component and a dramatic video series called ``Chlorine.''

Another Site

Therein lies part of the rub. The agency which represents Phelps, Octagon, has developed a similar Web site, swimroom.com. It's part of an array of swimming-oriented Octagon-created media products under the banner ``Swim With the Stars.'' These include DVDs of Phelps and sidekicks. Octagon's stated purpose is ``igniting the sport of swimming,'' but its interests aren't necessarily the same as those of Chuck Wielgus.

That's why he set up a meeting with Peter Carlisle of Octagon during Olympic qualifying trials in Omaha, Nebraska. ``Peter, let's figure it out,'' he recalls telling Phelps's agent. ``Let's find a strategy that allows us to work collaboratively. I want the most beneficial lifetime relationship we can create between USA Swimming and Michael Phelps.''

``Michael wouldn't have it any other way,'' replied Carlisle. (That's how Wielgus remembers it anyway.) Carlisle wasn't available to be interviewed last week.

Only time will tell whether sport and star can get along swimmingly. Scott Goldblatt, a former Olympic teammate of Phelps and now manager of swimnet.com, is optimistic.

``Michael has always said he wanted to build the sport and make it more mainstream,'' he says. We're just in a different landscape, with no precedent.''

(John Helyar, co-author of Barbarians at the Gate, is an editor-at-large for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: John Helyar in Atlanta at jhelyar@bloomberg.net