NEW WATER SPORT COULD SINK PHELPS

He didn't actually admit to smoking pot, but Michael Phelps's
concession that he "engaged in behaviour which was regrettable and
demonstrated bad judgment" after a picture of him taking a haul off a
bong was published on the weekend could sink his reputation and torch
millions in sponsorship dollars.

It won't, however, hurt him in the pool, as the man with the most
Olympic gold medals ever - 14 - looks to add to his collection in
2012 in London. Marijuana is a banned substance under World
Anti-Doping Agency rules, but only during competition, when the drug
could provide a calming benefit. Outside of events, marijuana is not
out of bounds.

But Mr. Phelps's sponsors, including wholesome names such as cereal
maker Kellogg Co., likely won't be impressed.

Nor will sponsors be forgiving, though Mr. Phelps did receive support
Sunday from sports overseers such as USA Swimming, which said, "We
realize that none among us is perfect."

Kellogg, which signed up the swimming star after his record eight
gold medals last summer in Beijing, didn't respond to requests for
comment. Kellogg put Mr. Phelps - who makes upwards of $10-million
annually from corporate backers - beside Tony the Tiger on boxes of
Corn Flakes.

The likes of Visa and long-time sponsor Speedo also were silent.

"Yes, half the country has smoked dope, but if you're going to be the
poster boy for good, clean living, you can't get nailed like this,"
said Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University.

"The big damage is the perception. He's the sort of person who is
marketed in the mom-and-apple-pie category to the Disney crowd."

The picture, taken in November at a party at the University of South
Carolina, where he reportedly also pounded beers and shots of liquor,
was published by the tabloid News of the World in Britain Sunday. It
instantly was everywhere, all over the Internet and on newscasts
around the world.

"He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does
swimming in the pool," said one unnamed source in the story in News
of the World. "He was the gold-medal winner of bong hits."

Mr. Phelps has already managed to escape controversy once. After
winning his first six gold medals in Athens in 2004, the
then-19-year-old was busted for drunk driving. He quickly pleaded
guilty, was given the mild reprimand of a $250 fine, 18 months of
probation and some speaking engagements about the ills of driving
under the influence to high-school students. "I let a lot of people
in the country down," he told NBC television at the time.

This incident could be more severe, even if the likes of U.S.
President Barack Obama has said he smoked pot (and snorted cocaine
when he could afford it) when he was in high school.

Octagon, the large sports and entertainment agency that represents
Mr. Phelps, desperately tried to stop the News of the World from
publishing the photo, the tabloid reported. Once the photo appeared,
Mr. Phelps issued a statement of contrition.

"I'm 23 years old, and despite the successes I have had in the pool,
I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that
people have come to expect from me," he said in a statement e-mailed
by Octagon. "For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public
it will not happen again."

Richard Pound, the Montrealer who until recently ran the World
Anti-Doping Agency, has a reputation for a hard-line stand on drugs,
but in an interview Sunday said marijuana is a "marginal" concern
compared with substances such as steroids.

"I'm not somebody who insists on perfect behaviour on the part of
athletes," said Mr. Pound, a swimmer in the 1960 Olympics. "The
doping we're worried about is enhancement of performance. Taking a
puff from a water pipe with some marijuana in it is well short of the
electric chair, as far as I'm concerned."

The U.S. Olympic Committee said it was "disappointed" and that Mr.
Phelps "regrettably" failed as a positive role model for others,
particularly young people. USA Swimming, said, "We hope that Michael
can learn from this incident."

Kevin Wamsley, an Olympic historian at the University of Western
Ontario, said the risk Mr. Phelps faces is falling short of an
almost-impossible ideal - the pressure to be perfect - one he and his
management team created in an effort to cash in on all those gold medals.

"It's our whole tradition of making role models out of athletes,"
Prof. Wamsley said. "If an athlete embraces that, and makes that part
of marketing campaigns, you'd have to be extremely careful about your
social behaviour."

Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati was briefly stripped of a gold
medal - the first ever won in snowboarding - in 1998 by the
International Olympic Committee after testing positive for marijuana
at the Nagano Winter Olympics, but the medal was reinstated on appeal
because the drug wasn't officially banned by the IOC and the body
overseeing snowboarding, a situation that was thereafter quickly amended.