I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.

Olympic Champion Michael Phelps, who vaulted to international stardom during the 2008 Summer Olympics by winning a record eight gold medals in swimming, has been caught in a very compromising position, according to a report by the British paper News of the World.

The paper has a photo of Phelps smoking from a bong, a water pipe normally used for smoking marijuana. (View the photo here.) The alleged photo was taken at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where Phelps was visiting a female student who he was secretly seeing. The paper’s anonymous source relates that Phelps partied hard each night he was there, which is not out of keeping with other reports of the Olympian since his swimming triumphs.

News of the World also makes the very provocative claim that people representing Phelps tried to snuff out the story and offered the paper extraordinary incentives not to publish.

For all things Michael Phelps, check out HuffPost’s Michael Phelps BigNews Page.

huffingtonpost.com