Michael Phelps’ Olympic legacy is defined by his unmatched dominance in the pool, with a record 28 medals that cemented his place in sporting history. Yet behind the glory lies a side of the champion few expect; One marked by surprising indifference toward anything less than gold. That attitude surfaced during a light-hearted exchange with Chandler Parsons, where a casual remark revealed just how little those other medals meant to him.

On a previous episode of Run It Back about nine months ago, Parsons had a brief conversation with the Flying Fish Michael Phelps. And, on October 10, the channel brought back a hilarious moment from the conversation on Instagram. In the video, Phelps admitted that he would correct people if anyone claimed that he had fewer than 23 gold medals. But Parsons noticed something different. He noticed that Phelps actually had 28 Olympic medals. And the Olympian only counted the golds. So, what did he do with the rest of the five medals? 

When Parsons pressed on, Phelps revealed that there was a time when he actually didn’t know where one of his medals was. It wasn’t like he gave it away or stuff like that. He simply didn’t care about his medals that weren’t gold. Phelps stated, “I don’t like to look at them. I don’t like the silver and the bronze ones at all.” He returned to the missing medal right away. For around two or three years, he had only 27 medals with. “Because one was in my financial advisor’s like desk drawer in his office. All of a sudden we put two and two together and found it,” he added. 

This extracted a bit of laughter from the studio staff. But Parsons kept moving forward with the jokes. He suggested that Michael Phelps could use the bronze medals as a ball marker in his next golf tournament. But the swimmer took it a notch further. He countered, “That the Athens ones would be nice, because they were small and thin.” That left the host of the show with only one remark –“What a flex!” 

Of course, Phelps seems to have learned his lesson. And people have often wondered where he likes to keep his medals. Some people have even asked him about the whereabouts of his biggest accolades.

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Where does Michael Phelps safeguard his medals?

Back in 2024, the legendary swimmer appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and the talk show host decided to talk about Phelps’ journey after returning from the Rio Olympics. The first question that the host asked the Baltimore Bullet was about what the swimmer did with the medals. Phelps answered,  “It’s actually wild, I have probably seen them all together maybe twice.” But then he pointed out that he never really went in public with his medals. 

DeGeneres wondered if the medals came in their separate boxes. And Phelps confirmed that the ones from the Rio Olympics came in their own cases. And since he seldom brings the medals out, Michael Phelps simply wasn’t going to let any of his medals go missing again. Possibly reflecting on the previously missing medal, Phelps said, “They’re in a secret place, where there are probably two people in the world who know where they are.”

And when DeGeneres enquired about the whereabouts of the medals, the Olympian simply refused to answer. The only two people who know about the location are Phelps himself and his wife, Nicole Phelps. Despite not giving away the secret location, his humorous approach won many hearts. Fans were pleasantly surprised by the reveal of a slightly modest storage approach.