Mark Spitz = Class Act

flyersfan31

flyersfan31

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Freiburgfan31
I have to give the guy credit - he's been the "greatest Olympian" for years.

Now Michael Phelps comes in, prepared with space-age technology and incredible scientific training assistance (they prick his ear 3 mins after every race to get a lactic acid count, which determines his swim-down time), and has tied and is prepared to top Mark's 7 gold medal count.

What does Spitz do? He praises Phelps effusively. No "If I had that when I was racing I would have...." No bad-mouthing. Nothing but praise, and congratulations. It really is amazing in this day that I could be so, well, amazed at Spitzes classy remarks. Talk about a true sportsman.

He was a hero to me when I was a kid. I think anyone who swam competitively wanted to be like Mark Spitz. I think kids can still look up to him today!

(We'll ignore the Mark Spitz Playgirl spread for the purposes of this post! :))
 
hmm i thought that Spitz was whining about not getting invited to Beijing.
 
But Spitz believes that if he'd had an extra event at the time, he would have been the first to eight.
"I won seven events. If they had the 50m freestyle back then, which they do now, I probably would have won that too," he told AFP in Hong Kong.
...
"There is nothing I am going to be able to say or do that is going to prevent this from happening. It is what it is," said Spitz, who won worldwide fame with his historic performance, in then-West Germany, 36 years ago.
http://nz.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news/article/-/4879241/golds-probably-says-spitz

"I never got invited. You don't go to the Olympics just to say, I am going to go. Especially because of who I am," Mark Spitz told AFP in Hong Kong.
"I am going to sit there and watch Michael Phelps break my record anonymously? That's almost demeaning to me. It is not almost -- it is."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/11/mark-spitz-needs-to-stop_n_118219.html
​
Ultimately, you have to judge athletes from different eras based on how they compare to other athletes of their day. Clearly, Phelps benefits from a greater "state of the art" in training and technique, but his competition does too.

Spitz certainly has a legitimate point about there being additional races to compete in. This is similar to "career records" in other sports where the length of a season has changed.
-harry
 
i'm going to disagree. I saw a pretty long interview w/ Spitz. Yes he outwardly was happy for Phelps, but I could tell he was upset. I was waiting for him to make excuses, like about the LZR suit. He certainly did bring it up, but he didn't whine about it. I think he was subtly hinting that it's unfair. I could tell he's upset about the whole thing, but he did a fine job being congratulatory.
 
I think Spitz is jealous and missing the limelight. He is trying to hide it, but it comes through in some of his statements, facial expressions and body language.
 
I never realized there was that much interest in swimming. Didn't Brian Boytano do something at some point in water?

WWBBD?
 
SkyHog said:
I never realized there was that much interest in swimming.
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I never realized there was that much interest in beach volleyball. I'm sure others will disagree, but it just isn't worth the TV time, IMO.

I think NBC only televises what the US has a good chance to win.

-Skip
 
Skip Miller said:
I think NBC only televises what the US has a good chance to win.
-Skip
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I remember getting up early on a Sunday morning in 1988 to watch a volleyball match. Peru against someone else. My wife is from Peru, so was very interested in the outcome. I don't remember the details, but if one team got a certain number of points ahead of the other, it would have an effect on the USA team standing.

As soon as the required number of points was achieved, they switched to one of their human interest stories about something.

The coverage has gone downhill ever since.
 
Other than the bloodbath which was the '56 Hungry Vs USA water polo match, there hadn't been much interest in swimming or water polo. Spitz introduced a new era for coverage. Even then, the coverage was not much more than sound bites.

Even when the USA had a very strong water polo team in the late '70s and all of the '80s there was almost zero coverage...if you blinked you missed it. It was VERY frustrating.

And in all my years of competitive swimming I never met one fish who said they wanted to be like Spitz. In fact, Spitz had a reputation for being a slacker in work out. But he got the job done so no one can argue that.
 
Richard said:
Other than the bloodbath which was the '56 Hungry Vs USA water polo match, there hadn't been much interest in swimming or water polo. Spitz introduced a new era for coverage. Even then, the coverage was not much more than sound bites.
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That was Hungary vs the USSR, played the month after the USSR invaded Hungary.
 
I think, that while what Phelps is doing is AMAZING, to even compare it to Spitz and his time is silly.

Spitz swam with no cap and 70's style hair and a MUSTACHE!

To try and compare todays "machinaletes" to back then is to compare an F22 to a P51.
 
tdager said:
I think, that while what Phelps is doing is AMAZING, to even compare it to Spitz and his time is silly.

Spitz swam with no cap and 70's style hair and a MUSTACHE!

To try and compare todays "machinaletes" to back then is to compare an F22 to a P51.
Click to expand...

Back then there was no **** testing either. Besides, the time records for the events themselves didn't stand long and have been eclipsed many times over since then. The only "record" that stood was how many gold medals won in an Olympics, and for that there is absolutly no relevence to the "then and now" arguement except that another race has been added. As far as most golds, that is about racing people from the same time heads up, so there is no advantage given to technological advances. It's not like Phelps was going against Spitz's times.
 
I've got to wonder why Mark Spitz wasn't invited to the Olympics. The US Olympic Committee is hard to understand. He must have done something somewhere along the line to **** the committee off. He should have been there and I don't blame him for being upset that he wasn't included.

I saw the interview last night and thought he did a pretty good job. No doubt he'd prefer that nobody ever broke his record. I can't imagine the ego these folks have. But he sang the party song and did his best to give Phelps the credit he's due. That's all we can ask.

He was, by the way, a hell of a stud back in the day.
 
gibbons said:
I've got to wonder why Mark Spitz wasn't invited to the Olympics. The US Olympic Committee is hard to understand. He must have done something somewhere along the line to **** the committee off. He should have been there and I don't blame him for being upset that he wasn't included.

I saw the interview last night and thought he did a pretty good job. No doubt he'd prefer that nobody ever broke his record. I can't imagine the ego these folks have. But he sang the party song and did his best to give Phelps the credit he's due. That's all we can ask.

He was, by the way, a hell of a stud back in the day.
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I agree. I saw the interview, and didn't see anything but praise for Phelps. He was a class act, though I too was wondering why he wasn't invited. He stated that he was in Greece to watch Phelps in 2004.
 
Bottom line, it was a level playing field then as it is now. Phelps is amazing.
 
wow, so many spitz haters. :confused:Well, As far as being invited, pudgy little Mary Lou Retton was invited and she only won 1 gold in a boycott Olympics. Spitz had those 7 and I sure thought that was awesome.
 
The only Olympics I ever enjoyed watching I saw in Mexico. No human interest crap, and they showed a lot of stuff.

Spitz was pretty amazing. The suits may be new, but even in the dark ages, er the 1970's, folks new enough about hydrodynamics that they went without hair and with swim caps to make themselves more streamlined. That he did all that with some fairly obvious handicaps suggest what a tremendous athlete he was.
 
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