Michael Phelps made his Olympic debut in 2000 at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. He was only 15 years old, making the U.S. Olympic swimming team after a rapid rise through the junior and senior ranks.
Phelps did not win a medal in Sydney, but he reached the final of the men’s 200-meter butterfly and finished fifth. That result was an early sign of his potential: within four years, he would become a multiple Olympic champion at the 2004 Athens Games.
His Sydney appearance is sometimes confused with 2004, when Phelps won six gold medals and two bronze medals, or with 2008, when he won eight golds in Beijing. The 2000 Games were the beginning of his Olympic career, while Athens was his breakthrough and Beijing was his record-setting peak. Phelps later competed at the 2012 London Olympics and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, retiring after Rio with the largest Olympic medal haul ever recorded by an athlete.