8902080056
DETROIT FREE PRESS
890921
Thursday, September 21, 1989
METRO EDITION
1D
MITCH ALBOM
SEE ALSO METRO FINAL EDITION PAGE 1D
Copyright (c) 1989, Detroit Free Press
OLD MAN OF SWIMMING BACK ON OLYMPIC TRAIL
"Come on, Mark. Race him."
Mark Spitz looked over the pool and grinned. He was filming a piece for
ABC-TV and Rowdy Gaines, preparing for the upcoming LA Olympics, was in the
water, working out. One of the coaches playfully suggested that Spitz, 34,
drop the microphone, wash off the makeup and show Gaines, 25, some of the old
magic. "Come on, Mark. Race him." Spitz thought: Why not? There he was, a
network pretty boy; he probably hated guys like him back when he was
competing, and there was all this water, calling his name . . .
Go! Fifty meters. Spitz won. Another race. Go! Fifty meters. He won again.
Gaines swears he was "going all out." They raced three more times, and all
were close. Gaines was stunned. So was Spitz. He had given up racing a dozen
years ago, after he'd won everything in sight at the Munich Olympics.
"And they call me the old man of swimming," Gaines said, shaking his head.
That was five years ago. Spitz never forgot it. "To be honest," he says
now, "that's probably the single biggest reason I'm trying this." He is
talking to me from LA, where he has a clothing business and where the phone
has been ringing off the hook. The reason is simple: The biggest thing to
ever come out of a pool is now stepping back in. Mark Spitz wants to compete
in Barcelona, 1992, two decades after he became the golden boy of swimming.
And he thinks he can win.
Body built for swimming I had never spoken to Mark Spitz before, but I
could see his face as I pressed the receiver to my ear. It was the face on
that famous poster, with him bare- chested and bronzed, tucked tightly in his
swim trunks, smiling from under his mustache as the seven gold medals dangled
around his neck. This was the '70s, when we'd stopped caring so much about the
good of society and started caring more about ourselves. Achievement was in.
And Spitz was the ultimate in achievement.
Seven races entered; seven races won. The poster of him became a symbol
for American glory, the same way a poster of Farah Fawcett in swimwear would
soon become the symbol of American sex appeal.
But, like Fawcett, Spitz faded. New heroes arose. I had heard he was in
dental school. Then I'd heard he was in real estate. I knew he'd made a lot
of money on endorsements, but the products lasted longer than he did. Spitz
was always a little stiff out of water, like a dying fish, and no surprise,
since his father put him in the pool as an infant. "Mark," his dad would say,
"how many lanes in swimming?" And he would answer "six."
"And how many lanes win?"
"One. Only one."
He grew up with chlorine under his fingernails. His room was stuffed
with trophies. By his first Olympics, in 1968, he was already billed as enfant
terrible. Reporters privately rejoiced when he won just two gold medals in
Mexico City, both for relays. But, four years later, in Munich, he blew them
all away. Tall, lithe, with the sinewy muscles of a man destined for water, he
was brilliant. Seven golds. Seven world records. This was a few years before
it became fashionable to study every fiber of an Olympic athlete's body, and
so, on the day Spitz quit, no one really knew how good he was.
We're about to find out.
"Unlike a lot of sports, you can get faster in swimming as you get older,"
he says. "Studies show that. My body is built for this sport. Plus, I'm only
shooting for one event this time, not seven. It will be so much less wear and
tear."
The one event is the 100-meter butterfly -- the windmill- like stroke
which an average guy can do for about six seconds before gasping for breath.
When Spitz won that event in 1972, the other swimmers saw only his feet. His
time from Munich, had it counted in last year's Olympic Games in Seoul, would
have still given him eighth place. Sixteen years later? That's remarkable.
Symbol for couch potatoes There are swim coaches who believe Spitz could
pull this off. There are guys like Gaines who swear he's not joking. All of
which answers most questions. Except the big one. Why?
"First of all," says Spitz, who would be 42 in the Barcelona Games, "I
don't see this as a comeback. That would imply that I failed, or that I didn't
quite get there. I got there. This is a whole different thing.
"I just find this a challenge. And based on the reaction from people so
far, they're rooting for me. I've become a sort of symbol for couch potatoes
everywhere. It's the middle-age syndrome, I guess."
Spitz says this, and I am not sure if he is talking about us or himself. I
see in him a superb athlete who is still in great shape. I also see a man who
has a clothing company, a wife, a kid, and who, on his next birthday, will
turn 40. I see a lot of men like that. They mostly wish they were younger.
So be it. Spitz has always looked in the pool and seen his own
reflection. And he's heading for the pool once again. Glory, someone once
said, is the most addicting habit. I hope he makes it. I hope he wins a gold
medal. But I don't think he's doing this for the couch potatoes of America.
"Did you ever think about making a comeback as a dentist?" I ask him.
"Never," he says.
I didn't think so.
INTERVIEW; MARK SPITZ