Refugee swimmers Alaa Maso and Eyad Masoud on meeting Michael Phelps at Fukuoka 2023: "Jaws were open the whole time"
The most decorated Olympian of all time hosted a surprise meet-and-greet with a small group of swimmers where he gave advice on setting goals, finding motivation and overcoming pre-competition jitters.
Swimming
An email was sent out to a select group of swimmers at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships this week. The message was simple: “Congratulations, you won a meet-and-greet with a swimming legend. Be there by this time at the athlete lounge," one of the lucky recipients, refugee swimmer Alaa Maso, shared with Olympics.com in Fukuoka.
At the set day and time, the athletes went into the lounge and listened to a few introductory speeches.
And then the door opened.
“Suddenly, out of nothing, Michael Phelps entered the room and I was like, ‘Am I awake?’” Maso told Olympics.com. “That was a very nice surprise. I think one of the best I ever had in my life.
“My jaw wasn’t closed the whole conversation from the moment he entered the room.”
The most decorated Olympian of all time talked about his career, gave training advice, and answered questions from the swimmers.
“Jaws were open the whole time,” said Maso, who is competing in Fukuoka as part of the World Aquatics Refugee Team and was part of the IOC Refugee Olympic Team at Tokyo 2020 in 2021. “He’s so open to speak personally and all his replies were from his own experience in life, especially after 2012 because he opened that case for us as well and spoke about one of his worst years ever, which is something very appreciated because everybody has such downs and if they see that even the best of the best has such (moments), they will have faith in themselves that they will be able to come out of it."
Originally scheduled to take thirty minutes, there was so much interest and so many questions that the meet-and-greet went well past the hour.
Fellow refugee swimmer Eyad Masoud, who competed here at his second world championships, told us that he would have benefitted from meeting Phelps even if the USA swim legend did not utter a word the entire time.
“I was sitting down there just looking at him. He was talking and I was like, 'I’m not even listening'. I was just staring at him. It was unbelievable," Masoud said to Olympics.com in an exclusive interview. "When you meet the greatest of all time in anything, you’re trying to look for those features that helped them to become who they were and sometimes they can explain it and sometimes it just appears in their behaviour and I try to study both.
"I try to just sit back and listen to exactly what they’re saying and how they’re saying it, the look in their face, some pointers, some stuff that he would just throw out of the blue and move on quickly, I’ll be like, 'Woah, that would have meant something'.”
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So what was some of the wisdom that Phelps shared with up-and-coming swimmers in Fukuoka, Japan?
The importance of planning a season, setting season goals, and finding the right motivation were some of the topics that came up.
“He was the greatest because he explored his personal legend. The competitive advantage that he had, no one else would have had, so how did he nurture those features? That’s what I’m interested in," Masoud said. "I might have different features than him. I can’t race 400 IM [Individual Medley]. I’d probably just die at the end, so building my expectations or my lifestyle similar to his is kind of irrelevant. (It's about) seeing how he overcame difficulties and how he motivated himself throughout the years.
“I took a couple of pointers and I wrote them down straight away, about how some of my training aspects need to change if I want to become better."
Tokyo 2020 Olympian Maso got to ask the 23-time Olympic champion two questions. One addressed a common concern among athletes - dealing with nerves before a competition.
“He said, 'you have to know that this pool or the pool you’re racing at is just the same pool that you’re training at. The temperature is pretty much the same, the lanes are the same, the water depth is the same so you don’t have to have fear from the water'," Maso recalled. "You have to change those nerves from fear to excitement."
"He even described himself as a beast that is just willing to be released from the cage and those words are going to stay with me.” - Alaa Maso to Olympics.com on advice from Michael Phelps
Phelps' words are not only staying with Maso, but already helping him in the pool.
“Sometimes I have fear from the pool, but today in the 50 and in the 100m freestyle [at the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka] I wasn’t having any nerves of fear," he said. "I was just excited and I just wanted to swim, so I think those words already touched me and changed me, so those are the ones I will remember the most."