The news is that swimming officials banned Michael Phelps from competition for three months. One of his sponsors, Kellog’s, dropped him and may be looking to get some of their money back.

I am stunned, virtually speechless. Virtually.

Michael Phelps is an “American Hero.” Cut the guy some slack.

Sure he needs to be a better role model, but the guy was all over the apology. Though, all he really should be apologizing for is the greed of the camera phone photographer who did him dirty. (Ironically enough the money for that picture is probably going for some beer, some weed and maybe a new bong.)

Young Michael Phelps, who’s only 24, is taking it really hard.

“What I have gone through in the past week, no one wants to go through. If I decide to walk away, I will decide to walk away on my own terms,” he told The Baltimore Sun. (1)

He’s considering quitting. The stuffiness of the “sport” of swimming and the Kellog’s Company is going to force the greatest swimmer and Olympian of our generation, perhaps the greatest Olympian of all time, to walk away.

Wasn’t he an American hero mere seconds before the photo was released? He had smoked marijuana then, hadn’t he? We just didn’t know about it.

If anything this makes Phelps a more realistic idol, much like President Barack Obama has been. The President of the United States of the America has openly admitted to have smoked weed before. Who cares if a 24 year-old kid does it?

I’m all for setting a good example, but telling little kids that smoking is never okay is like teaching abstinence. In today’s world, neither are realistic.

The guy has 16 Olympic medals, 14 of them gold. I think we, as a nation, can give him a swimming mulligan, or whatever that is called.

Sources:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article5679473.ece