Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps was sentenced to 18 months of supervised probation Friday after pleading guilty to drunken driving, his second drunken driving charge since 2004.
Mr. Phelps was arrested in September in downtown Baltimore after swerving over a yellow line while driving 84 mph in a 45 mph zone, police documents show, NPR reported Friday.
Police said the famous swimmer failed field sobriety tests and registered a 0.14 on a blood-alcohol test.
Mr. Phelps was sentenced to one year in jail, but a judge agreed to suspend the sentence if he completes the probationary period without further incident and ordered the swimmer to abstain from alcohol during the 18 months, NPR reported.
“I now have the tools to move past this,” Mr. Phelps told the judge, The Associated Press reported. “What I did was wrong, and I made a bad mistake. I’m looking forward to having a much brighter future than I had in the past.”
His attorney, Steven Allen, told the court that Mr. Phelps is attending Alcoholics Anonymous and continuing with therapy, AP reported.
Mr. Phelps was convicted of drunken driving in Maryland in 2004 and was consequentially banned from USA Swimming for six months. He went through a six-week rehab program after the incident.
In 2009 the British newspaper News of the World published a photo of Mr. Phelps smoking marijuana, which got him another three-month suspension from swimming.
The record-breaking swimmer recently came out of retirement with plans to compete in his fifth Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.
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