Your humble correspondent writes from New York where the sportsman making all the headlines is the most successful Olympian of all time, with 11 - count 'em, ELEVEN - individual gold medals to his credit, Michael Phelps.The headlines are not because, with seemingly nothing else that commends itself to do with his life, he is just about on his way to selection for his fifth Olympic Games.
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No, it's because the 30-year-old has just told Matt Lauer on the American Today Show how, at one point when his life was falling apart, with alcoholic binges, two DUI arrests, time in rehab, "the sort of the path that I was going down," meant there could have been only one end had he not got off it.
"I think a lot of people close to me saw it. And I was going fast. Fast. Honestly, at one point I felt like I didn't want to see another day."
Yes, that's right.
The most successful Olympian of all time, the greatest swimmer the world has known, had so completely lost his way, he was no longer sure he wanted to live. The good news is he is now completely off the grog, is going to be a father, and seems to sort of have his life back together.
"I'm actually happy every day," he said in another interview. "I'm actually able to be productive every day. I think that's something that I am very proud of and, you know, I think when I do retire I'll be able to look back and say that [rehab] was something that really helped."
But still, the resemblance to the experience of our own swimmers is uncanny, ain't it?
Grant Hackett, of course, made headlines for all the wrong reasons just last week, and he has been commendably frank about just how much he has struggled to find meaning after his swimming career was over.
Ian Thorpe, has been equally upfront about his struggles with depression, and has done his own time in rehab.
Kieren Perkins has noted many times how hard he found it once his swimming career was over, and how he had little idea how to live his life once the structure of swimming was removed from it.
Scott Miller? The silver medallist from the Atlanta Olympics was lucky to avoid jail for a variety of low-brow crimes and misdemeanours and was last seen in the public domain leaving a courthouse.
But look at that list above. All male swimmers, all of them the best or near best in the world, with seemingly the world at their feet. And yet all of them lost their way - some dangerously enough to intimate that suicide was a serious option.
So I'll ask the obvious.
Is it swimming itself that is at least part of the problem? Is it that swimming is now to the point that the only way you get to be world class is by training to such extremes that all the other life-skills that the rest of us pick up along the way, are left in their wake - meaning they struggle so badly once it's all over. And you're right, the same problems don't seem to show up in the female swimmer, though Shane Gould has always been strong on the ground that while there is always huge support to get to the top of the mountain, there is bugger all help to get down the other side once you've retired.
The solution? Not sure, but it certainly starts with recognition of the problem.
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Twitter: @Peter_Fitz
