Michael Phelps, the world’s most decorated Olympian athlete, said on CNN this morning that the London Olympic Games are his last and that he is retiring from Olympic competiton.
“I’m done. I don’t know if people really believe me, but I am actually finished. I’m retiring,” he told CNN’s Becky Anderson. When she pressed him, he replied, “Yes – I’m done.”
But after all his medals, all the glory and all the triumphs, one thing is abundantly clear: Phelps is not done earning money. There’s a giant pot of gold awaiting him in addition to all of his Olympic gold medals – and only time will tell how many endorsement deals and other lucrative offers will come his way.
In the meantime, here are some of the numbers currently pinned to U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, at age 27 one of the world’s best-known athletes:
$100 Million
What Phelps’s agent, Peter Carlisle, projected four years ago the swimmer could earn from endorsements over the course of his lifetime
$40 Million
Phelps’s current estimated net worth
$5 to 7 Million
His annual earnings after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
$5 Million
His annual earnings from sponsorships before the 2008 Beijing Olympics
11
Number of sponsors Phelps currently has, including Procter & Gamble, Subway, Hilton, Visa, Omega, Under Armour and Speedo
4.7 Billion
Number of people who watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That’s 70 percent of the world’s population. Swimming events helped drive record ratings for NBC in Beijing and helped make Phelps a household name.
6 Million
Phelps’s current number of Facebook fans
1 Million
Phelps’s current number of Twitter followers
22
Total Olympic medals won by Phelps throughout his career, beginning in Sydney, Australia, in 2000, when he was 15 years old
18
Gold medals won by Phelps in his career, twice as many as won by Olympians Mark Spitz (swimming), Carl Lewis (track and field), Larissa Latynina (gymnastics), and Paavo Nurmi (cross country)
11
Gold medals won by Phelps for individual events
8
Gold medals won by Phelps during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 – the first Olympian to do so. He broke the 40-year record held by Mark Spitz of 7 gold medals won during the Munich Olympics in 1972.
8
Number of medals he won (6 gold, 2 bronze) at the Athens Olympics in 2004, which tied Soviet gymnast Aleksandr Dityatin (1980) for most medals won in a single Olympics
71
Total number of medals Phelps has won in major international long-course competitions
8
Number of times he’s won the American Swimmer of the Year Award
6
Number of times he’s won the World Swimmer of the Year Award
$1 Million
The amount of bonus money Speedo offered Phelps if he won 8 gold medals in Beijing. When he accomplished that, Phelps used the money to launch the Michael Phelps Foundation, which focuses on swimming and promoting healthy lifestyles.
89
Percentage of the public who knew of Michael Phelps before the London Olympics – far dwarfing any other Olympian, other than basketball players (by contrast, Misty May-Treanor, the U.S. Women's beach volleyball player, is known by 33 percent of the public).
194 lbs
His weight
6’4”
His height
7
Age he began swimming
3
His hobbies: golf, video games and card games
12,000
Number of daily calories he consumed during his training regime for the 2008 Olympics – six times the intake of a normal adult male
Sources: Forbes, CNN, NBC, AP, The Guardian
