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DAD’S DEEP DIVIDE WITH SWIM KING

Everyone in the world is clamoring for a piece of golden boy Michael Phelps – except for his own father.

Phelps’ dad, Fred, admitted to The Post that he has not had a single conversation with his Olympian son since Michael left for Beijing.

And eight medals later, Michael still has nothing to say.

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“He’s so busy, I’m sure not even his agent can get a hold of him,” Fred told The Post yesterday outside his home in the Baltimore suburb of Linthicum Heights, when asked why he had not yet made any attempt to congratulate his record-setting son.

Michael’s mom, Debbie, has been seen cheering and crying from the stands as her son won medal after medal in Beijing, but Fred has had no contact with the Olympian.

“I’m very proud of him and all he’s done,” Fred said as he aimed to deflect attention away from the severed relationship. “This is not about me, it’s about him.”

The retired Maryland state trooper divorced Debbie, his high-school sweetheart, in 1992 when Michael was just 9, the same year doctors diagnosed the swimmer with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

“It was like a storybook [marriage], but sometimes chapters go in different directions,” Debbie told the Baltimore Sun. “We were close, but we grew apart.”

Since then, Fred, who remarried eight years ago, has been in and out of Michael’s life, relatives said.

“This is his world, and I’m just watching him travel through it,” Fred told the Baltimore Sun in a 2004 interview. “People ask me how he’s doing, where he’s swimming next, and it’s hard to say that I don’t know.”

Although he didn’t hop a plane for Beijing to see his son compete, the elder Phelps said he “watched [Michael] every night on TV” last week.

Michael’s older sisters, Hilary and Whitney – who sat with their mother Sunday when he won his record-setting eighth gold medal – were instrumental in raising Michael when their dad was not there every day.

“When we started, my dad would be up at 4 a.m. on the mornings I had 5:30 practice,” said Hilary, who competed as a swimmer in her childhood.

After the divorce, it was Michael’s mom who drove him to swim practice each day and to baseball games Saturdays.

Michael has never publicly acknowledged his father as having any role in his success.

“The person I love the most is sitting in the front row – my mom – for everything she’s done,” Michael told reporters Monday in Beijing.

Prior to the start of the 2004 Athens Games, Michael said he hadn’t been in touch with his father since graduating from high school.

“There are reasons and I really don’t want to get into that,” Michael said at the time. “He didn’t call me after I set my first world record in 2001.”

The 23-year-old Olympian reconciled with his dad right before the 2004 Games, and Fred even flew to Athens, where Michael won six gold medals. But the relationship quickly soured.

erin.calabrese@nypost.com