MAKING OF A LEGEND: Mother, sisters help create Phelps phenom

BENGALURU: Four minutes, 8.26 seconds. The magical numbers on the amber scoreboard inside the Olympic Aquatic Centre in Athens glowed at him as Michael Phelps tried to comprehend what he had just achieved - his first Olympic gold medal, embossed with a world record.
Euphoria engulfed the aquatic centre on August 14, 2004 as a teary-eyed Phelps emerged from the pool and trudged towards the warm-down area.Clutching a peanut butter jelly sandwich in one hand and the 400m individual medley medal in the other, the 19-year-old made his way to a chain-link fence, on the other side of which stood his 'Rock of Gibraltar' - his mother Debbie and elder sisters Hilary and Whitney.
Phelps slid the medal through the small gap in the fence and whispered to his family, "I did it".
"It remains one of the most incredible memories for our family," Hilary, on her maiden trip to India, recalled. "There was no media, no photographers to capture it. It was our private, happy moment. We joked that it felt like we were at the zoo."
His 22-medal haul makes him the most decorated Olympian of all time, a mentally tough, swimming phenom with a Greek god physique. But at the heart of it, it's the three women and a tightly-knit family that took credit for the 30-year-old's perseverance for sporting greatness.
As a five-year-old, Phelps was never interested in swimming. Forced to go along with his sisters for their swim lessons, Phelps, as Hilary puts it, 'didn't have a choice.' "He used to hate water touching his face. So Cathy Bennett, his first instructor, flipped him over and taught him backstroke. Slowly, he got the hang of it," the 37-year-old said.
At the age of nine, Phelps was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but Debbie never gave up. "I was in college when that happened. My mum did a lot of visualization with him and he still uses it to this day when he prepares for races. In the stands, she would form a 'C' with her hand, signifying composure, whenever she noticed that Michael was stressed before a race. She would sit with him and quiet his mind. At every meet, he visualizes the race in his head and how it should unfold," Hilary explained.
Even his decision to comeback from retirement two years ago was first conveyed to his ladies. "He left us a voice mail at 3am on April 15, 2013. I still have the recording. He had just bought a house in Mexico. The message said 'Pack your bags we are going on a trip.' Just when we thought this was finally going to be the family vacation we had never taken, he added, 'One more time. I'm going for Rio'," Hillary recalled.
Hilary takes pride in saying that the family grew up around the pool. She was the first to foray into competitive swimming, winning a four-year scholarship at the University of Richmond, where she broke four school records, and later completed an Ironman Triathlon in 2010. Whitney, two years younger to her, represented Team USA at the 1994 FINA World Championships in Rome and almost made it to the 1996 Atlanta Games. But it was Phelps who was meant for greater glory.
The trio has been a regular fixture at Phelps' Olympic journeys at Sydney (2000), Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and London (2012) and plan to continue their support at Rio next year as well. Likewise, Phelps did his part in being the cheerleader when Hilary completed the Ironman and Whitney ran the 2012 New York Marathon.