The Joseph Schooling Story
Joseph Schooling Story – The world was stunned during 2016 Rio Olympics as Joseph Schooling from Singapore, beats the most-decorated Olympian Michael Phelps in the 100m Butterfly finals winning the gold.
Joseph Schooling was the only swimmer to beat Michael Phelps in Rio and won more than a gold medal (first Olympic gold for Singapore).
According to Fox Sports, Schooling will be receiving 1 million Singaporean dollars (about USD $983,000) for his victory.
But there is an unheard story between Joseph Schooling and Michael Phelps. Did you know that Phelps became Schooling’s ‘HERO’?
In a lengthy post by Roger James Hamilton in Facebook, he narrated that Schooling and Phelps already met each other before when the Singaporean swimmer was still 13-years-old young.
That was in 2008 when Joseph Schooling met Michael Phelps for the first time during a visit in Singapore prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
In the post, Schooling said that he wanted to make his own career even though he idolizes Michael Phelps.
Then in 2011, after committing himself in swimming, Schooling his idol’s age-group ( 15-16 years) time in the 100 yards butterfly. Joseph said, “It’s been a target of mine and I’m really happy to do that. It is a huge boost… Hopefully, I can get more of his records.”
Now, the time has come in the 2012 London Olympics, when Schooling, 17, would finally race with Phelps.
It was also the same year when Schooling qualified for the Olympics, but, something unfortunate thing happened when he was told that his goggles were not Olympic standard before the race.
Although he got replacements, he ended up getting poor time in the race and didn’t get through the semi-finals. But, the good thing, Michael was there to comfort him.
“I was walking behind Phelps after my race when he looked at me and asked, ‘what’s wrong?’, Joseph said.
“I told him what happened and he hugged me and said, ‘you’re only so young, you still have a long way to go. It’s a learning experience so keep your head high and just keep moving on’,” he narrated.
Joseph continued on his journey being motivated by his idol saying that he will become stronger and become better than Phelps as he get older.
Recently, during the 2016 Rio Olympics, Joseph has proved that he really became better through time, experience, and his perseverance by winning the gold medal in the 100m Butterfly beating Phelps.
Michael Phelps, however has been collecting Gold medals in Rio, was also the first one to swim to congratulate Joseph for the win.
Such an inspiring story!
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