Sports Illustrated Honors Michael Phelps With Muhammad Ali Legacy Award
Nearly a decade after last competing on the international stage, Michael Phelps continues to make an impact. As an athlete, he provided inspiration to up-and-coming swimmers. These days, the Olympic legend is a leading advocate for mental health awareness, and Phelps has been recognized by Sports Illustrated for his advocacy and willingness to share his story with the world.
On Monday, Sports Illustrated announced that Phelps has been named SI’s Muhammad Ali Legacy Award winner. The Sports Illustrated award is designed “to honor a current or former athlete who embodies the ideals of sportsmanship, leadership and philanthropy as vehicles for changing the world.” Longtime Sports Illustrated scribe Tim Layden, a legend in the sports journalism field, wrote the feature on Phelps’ for the Muhammad Ali Award.
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It was Layden who wrote the feature story on Phelps in late 2015 that shed light on Phelps’ challenges, including his mental health. In the years since, Phelps has tirelessly worked as an adovcate for the mental health space, traveling the world to tell his story in the hope of helping others. More, it has been a goal of Phelps’ to make mental health part of the daily discussion, and not a stigmatized issue.
“We grow up in a society that does not speak totally stigma-free,” psychiatrist Christine Yu Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, told Layden for his latest feature on Phelps. “But that culture is changing, and Michael Phelps has been a part of that change. We are social creatures. We are unconsciously watching and mimicking those around us. Using your own lived experience story in the mental health and suicide prevention space in the way that Michael has is an enormous force for good. He has been part of a movement of fantastic change.”
In being named the 2025 Muhammad Ali Legacy Award winner, Phelps joined previous honorees such as Colin Kaepernick, Allyson Felix and LeBron James.