Michael Phelps won the James E. Sullivan Award in 2003.
The Amateur Athletic Union presents the award to recognize the outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. Phelps received it after a breakthrough year in which he established himself as a major international swimming star while still a teenager.
At the 2003 World Aquatics Championships in Barcelona, Phelps won four gold medals and two silver medals. He also became the first swimmer to set five world records at a single meet, achievements that helped make him the Sullivan Award’s 2003 recipient.
The award came before Phelps’s record-setting Olympic performances in Athens, Beijing, London, and Rio. That timeline can cause confusion: he won the Sullivan Award in 2003, before his first Olympic gold medals in 2004. The honor was for his amateur athletic achievements, not for a later Olympic season.