Spitz
Scene I: Mexico City, 1968. A gawky youngster of 18 who looks as if he could be Jerry Lewis' younger brother, perfunctorily addresses a putt. On the course beside him is his swimming coach and constant companion, Sherman Chavoor. Since the boy had recently boasted that he would become the first Olympian to win six gold medals, he needs all the relaxing he can get. Not today. A passerby happens to spot him on the green and shouts, "Hey, Jew boy, you aren't going to win any gold medals!" The brutal slur is delivered by one of the youth's comrades on the U.S. men's swimming team.
Scene II: Munich, 1972. A sinewy young man of 22, who looks as if he could be Omar Sharif's younger brother, confidently strides through the Olympic Village. Surrounding him is a retinue of coaches and teammates--the entourage of an athletic eminence. At the village entrance, dozens of jock groupies strain to touch him, plead for his autograph. Inside, competitors from other countries seek his signature. "Oh, look!" cries a delighted U.S. mermaid. "There he is!" Journalists pursue him into the shower before practice. People persistently ask: Can he win seven gold medals? Yes, he answers with quiet confidence.
THE Mexico City schlemiel and the Munich superstar are the same person: Mark Andrew Spitz of Carmichael, Calif. The sullen, abrasively cocky kid with the sunken visage has matured into a smooth, adroitly confident young man with modish locks and mustache. More important, he has developed into a talent without peer in the world of competitive swimming. In the four years since his personal disaster in Mexico City, where he won only two gold medals (and those in relay events), Spitz has grown up, graduated from college and at one time or another broken 28 world freestyle and butterfly records. That spectacular string of victories continued as the XX Olympiad got under way last week. Spitz led a green but able young American team into the competition with an incandescent performance that ranks with the legendary triumphs of Jim Thorpe, Paavo Nurmi and Jesse Owens.
Spitz and the other 11,999 athletes from 124 nations opened the Olympiad under the bright Bavarian sunlight in Munich's vast acrylic-domed stadium. The national teams paraded by the grandstand in a panoply of colors as massed bands played modern dance tunes instead of the traditional martial anthems. The Olympic flame, carried some 3,500 miles by an international team of 5,976 runners, was borne to the torch by Gunter Zahn, 18, West German runner. West German President Gustav Heinemann officially initiated the games with the prescribed 14-word pronunciamento: "I declare open the Olympic Games celebrating the XX Olympiad of the modern era." The mountain horns flourished, and 80,000 enthusiastic spectators and hundreds of millions of TV viewers settled back to watch the drama begin.
The first act belonged mainly to Mark Spitz and his American teammates. Plowing out of the water like Poseidon, Spitz with his high-chested motion churned up the Schwimmhalle pool in the 200-yd. butterfly. There may have been butterflies in Spitz's stomach too: "I remembered what happened in Mexico City," he admitted. Nonetheless, Mark knocked 2.6 seconds off his own world record of 2:3.3 to win the first of his 1972 pendants of Olympic gold. Finishing in second and third place, respectively, were Gary Hall, Spitz's teammate at Indiana University and roommate in Munich, and Robin Backhaus of Redlands, Calif.
The Americans considered Spitz's opening triumph as little short of a sign from Neptune. Said Peter Daland, head coach of the U.S. men's swimming team: "If Mark had lost his first race, he could have been discouraged. But the Mark Spitz of '72 is a tough person." Tough enough, in fact, to anchor another victory in the 400-meter freestyle relay later that night, giving him two gold medals and two world records on his first day of Olympian work. The next evening he came to the blocks in the finals of the 200-meter freestyle. His toughest competition, as it turned out, came from gritty Teammate Steve Center, 21, of Lakewood, Calif., who only the day before was released from a hospital following chest surgery for a partially collapsed lung. Center led at the 100-and 150-meter turns, but Spitz, slicing through the water with his simian arms and immense hands, surged ahead of Center to clip .72 sec. from his own world record and gain another gold medal.
Harpooning. Two days later Spitz splashed his way to more gold and more records in the 100-meter butterfly (54.27 sec.) and 800-meter freestyle relay, thereby tying the record for gold medals (five) set in 1920 by an Italian fencer, Nedo Nadi. At week's end it seemed that nothing short of harpooning Spitz in mid-stroke would prevent him from garnering medals Nos. 6 and 7 in the 100-meter freestyle and the 400-meter medley relay.
His distaff teammates--all those pug-nosed kids who look as if they should be back at Madison High doing their geometry homework (and probably will be this fall)--quickly picked up the beat. The initial shocker was provided by Sandra Neilson, 16, a dimpled, giggly blonde from El Monte, Calif., who defeated Teammate Shirley Ba-bashoff, 15, and Australia's highly touted Shane Gould, 15, in the 100-meter freestyle. Although Sandra was the top-ranked U.S. girl in that event last year, she had qualified only third in the Olympic trials in Chicago. But in Munich she turned the water to steam at the outset, led at the turn and was never behind as she clocked a new Olympic record of 58.59. Later the American team of Sandra, Shirley, Jennifer Kemp and Jane Barkman swept to a thrilling arm's-length finish over a steady East German team in the 400-meter relay, in 3:55.19--another world record.
Shane Gould's loss in the 100-meter freestyle, supposedly one of her best events, was indeed a surprise--even though many of the American girl swimmers were less convinced of her invincibility than were the experts. (Round their Olympic Village dorm, the U.S. girls wore T shirts bearing the legend "All that glitters is not Gould.") Nonetheless, the tawny, long-legged Sydney schoolgirl began in high fashion, picking up a gold medal and a world record in the difficult 400-meter medley (four different strokes). But Shane, though she had nothing like a Mexico City memory to haunt her, was in many ways under more immediate pressure than Spitz, with whom she had shared the pre-Olympic spotlight. She had to train for a wider variety of events (medley to dashes to 800-meter) and did not have for support the sort of formidable team the Aussies have fielded in the past. The effects of the burden surfaced in the 100-meter freestyle. After the event, Shane ruefully conceded, "I just didn't have that edge" to catch the flying Americans. Soon, though, she was as good as Gould again. Shane splashed out to such a commanding lead in the 400-meter freestyle that ABC-TV commentators Keith Jackson and Donna de Varona ignored her and concentrated on the race for runner-up. She later notched another medal and world record in the 200-meter freestyle. By week's end Shane, Roommate Beverly Whitfield, 18, a clerk with the Off-Track Betting Agency in New South Wales who defeated the favored Russian Galina Stepanova in the 200-meter breaststroke, and young Gail Neall, the winner of the 400-meter medley, had picked up five gold medals for Australia.
Other nations began to show some early gill. In what was probably the closest race in Olympic history, Sweden's Gunnar Larsson hit his electronic touch plate at the end of the 400-meter individual medley just 2/1,000 of a second before American Tim McK.ee touched his. The finish was so microscopically close that the two swimmers had to dawdle anxiously in the water for several minutes before the computers could determine the winner. Micki King, 28, an Air Force captain who foundered in Mexico City when she hit the board during her penultimate dive and broke her arm, recouped in Munich with a come-from-behind victory in the 3-meter springboard competition over Sweden's favored Ulrika Knape. But when Vladimir Vasin took a gold medal in the men's 3-meter springboard, well ahead of Craig Lincoln of Hopkins, Minn., who salvaged a bronze, the Russians captured an event the U.S. had dominated since 1912. Two Americans also lost out in the 100-meter breaststroke to a grinning college student named Nobutaka Taguchi, who brought Japan its first aquatic gold medal since 1956.
Meanwhile, the East Germans began to pile up points, in and out of the water, in their determined and carefully planned bid for Olympic pre-eminence (TIME, June 5, 1972). So meticulous were their preparations. they sent an inspection team to study the tortuous kayak and canoeing course built near Munich, then had it reproduced for training in Saxony on the Pleisse River. They were rewarded with two gold medals. One more gold medal went to World Champion Backstroker Roland Matthes in the 100-meter event, a repeat of his performance in Mexico City. By week's end the East Germans had collected an impressive total of eight gold, six silver and nine bronze medals.
The D.D.R. athletes also tried hard to crack the Russian and Japanese monopoly on the gymnastic bars and swings. They initially garnered a silver medal, won by a lithe, pretty medical student named Karin Janz in the women's all-round individual competition. She subsequently won a pair of golds in the individual long-horse and uneven-bar competitions. The men's gymnastics events were a replay of the traditional Japanese-Russian conflict. Exquisitely musculatured for the sport, the Japanese men performed breathtaking airborne arabesques that showed considerably more imagination and verve than the strong but methodical Russians. Although the Japanese flew off with all three medals in the all-round individual, two Soviet athletes picked up gold medals in the floor exercises and the long-horse event.
The Russians also won the gold and bronze medals in the women's all-round individual. That came as no surprise; the Soviets had dominated women's gymnastic events since they began Olympic competition. Winner of the individual was Ludmilla Tourischeva, 19, a solemn, dark-haired beauty who enjoys virtual prima-ballerina status in the Soviet Union. Executing such complicated maneuvers as 360DEG swings and somersaults underneath the uneven bars, Tourischeva outpointed the D.D.R.'s Janz and Teammate Tamara Lazakovich.
Disbelief. The crowd favorites, however, were two tiny porcelain dolls, the U.S.S.R's Olga Korbut and the U.S.'s Cathy Rigby. Olga, 17, put on a dazzling first-round performance on the uneven bars in the team event that had observers rubbing their eyes in disbelief. In the all-round event, however, Olga brushed her toe on the ground during her mount, lost both her poise and rhythm and returned to her seat barely blinking back the tears after recording a disastrous score of 7.50 (out of a possible 10). Undaunted, she overcame her jitters and returned the next day to win two gold medals--in the balance-beam and floor exercises--and the roaring acclaim of the audience.
Cathy Rigby, 19, the delicate (4 ft. 11 in., 90 Ibs.) American hope from Long Beach, Calif., did not fare as well. In the team event on the balance beam she deliberately omitted one leap so as not to endanger her team's point standings by attempting a risky maneuver. The sacrifice was in vain. It left Cathy tied for sixth place (she finished a mediocre tenth in the women's all-round individual). As it turned out, the generous gesture could not have helped the team, which finished in fourth place. That showing, the best for U.S. women since 1948, was somewhat tarnished by the complaint of Cathy's personal coach, Bud Marquette, that Eastern-bloc judges consistently gave American competitors unfairly low scores.
While Marquette's bristling charge (made on worldwide television) seemed to be a windy exercise in bad form, it may not have been without content. All week the officiating in the judgment events was a matter of boiling controversy. None was more violent than the fuss stirred up by the judges who declared a bloodied, badly mauled Soviet fighter, Valery Tregubov, the winner over the U.S.'s clearly superior Reginald Jones in a light-middleweight boxing bout (see box, page 66).
Otherwise, U.S. boxers were having remarkable success. Under the tutelage of Coach Bobby Lewis, the Americans brought to Munich the toughest boxing lineup since a young middleweight named Floyd Patterson headed the 1952 team in the Helsinki Games. As a result, U.S. fighters won ten of eleven bouts in the opening round of competition. Perhaps the most savage of these contests was a technical knockout registered by Bantamweight Ricardo Carreras of the Air Force over Australia's heavily favored Michael O'Brien. The well-matched pair whacked the daylights out of each other in the first two rounds of the three-round match. In the final round, Carreras, stronger and slightly faster than his rugged opponent, landed a thundering left hook to O'Brien's midsection that dropped the Irish-born metalworker to the canvas like a hot ingot.
Dogged. The U.S. was also scoring well in wrestling, a sport usually dominated by Eastern European athletes. In a major upset, Ben Peterson, 22, from Comstock, Wis., won a gold medal in the light-heavyweight class by pinning Bulgaria's Roussi Petrov, thus moving ahead (on points) of his most dogged competitor, Gennadi Strakhov of the Soviet Union. The same day, Peterson's brother John picked up a silver medal in the middleweight class. Because of another questionable judges' decision in the opening round, the American "Monster Man," 434-lb. Chris Taylor, finished with only a bronze. But two more gold medals were won by Lightweight Dan Gable, 23, and Welterweight Wayne Wells, 27, a lawyer from Norman, Okla.
Another pleasant surprise was the largely unheralded American basketball team, which at week's end seemed likely to leave Munich unbeaten; that would leave yet unbroken a U.S. Olympic winning streak dating back to 1936. Since this year's team lacks an all-round star of the caliber of Bill Bradley (1964) or Spencer Heywood (1968), there had been some speculation that the U.S. might finally get knocked off by the rough-and-tumble Cubans, who had defeated them in the 1970 Pan-American Games, the offense-minded Brazilians or the towering Russians. But wily Hank Iba, a college coach for 36 years (at Oklahoma State) and Olympic mentor for the past eight years, stitched together a tenacious, defense-oriented unit of his own. With 6-ft. 9-in. Jim Brewer of Minnesota holding Star Center Pedro Chappe to a mere four points, the U.S. team whipped the Cubans, 67-48. The Brazilians proved tougher, forcing the Americans to shoot from the outside as they built a seven-point lead in the second half. But the U.S., led by hard-driving Tom Henderson and Doug Collins, penetrated Brazil's formidable defense and earned a 61-54 victory and a clear shot at another undefeated Olympic tournament.
While U.S. athletes were picking up medals in events no one expected them to win, they also lost their best chance to win a gold or silver in an American specialty, the 100-meter dash. Eddie Hart and Rey Robinson, who have both equaled the world record of 9.9 sec. and who were favored to beat Russia's fleet Valery Borzov, were disqualified as the result of an unconscionable lapse by Sprint Coach Stan Wright. Hart and Robinson had easily qualified in the preliminary heats, but they missed competing in the quarterfinals (while unwittingly watching them on TV, thinking that they were viewing replays) because Wright had misinformed them about the starting time. U.S. Sprinter Robert Taylor, who had also qualified for the quarterfinals, discovered the mistake at the same time Hart and Robinson did, and just made it to the blocks for his heat. He remained in the running as the only U.S. hope in the 100 meters, but finished second behind Gold-Medal Winner Borzov.
Wright was desolated: "It's all my fault. I'm the one to blame." His anguish did not soften Hart and Robinson. "I don't care, the man is a coach, he can say he's sorry," fumed Robinson. "What about three years? What about torn ligaments, pulled muscles, a broken leg?" He added bitterly: "He can go on being a coach. What can I go on being?"
While public attention was focused last week on the water sports, the first gold medal of the Games was actually awarded in an event that only a Mafia button man could love: the slow-fire pistol shoot. It went to a Swedish gas station owner named Ragnar Skanaker who attributed his championship-caliber shooting to the fact that unlike opponents who place their nonfiring hand in their pockets, he ties his down to his belt. Another early gold medal, in prone small-bore-rifle shooting, went to a tall, sturdy North Korean soldier, Ho Jun Li, 22. When asked what had inspired his victory, Ho replied in English: "I've been personally told by President Kim II Sung before I left for Munich that 'you are doing the shooting as sharply as if you would try to hit a class enemy.' That is what I did." South Viet Nam's Olympiad roster of two, Mrs. Ho Ang Fhi Huong and Mr. Ho Hinh Fhu, are both pistol shooters and both come from Saigon. They dropped out at the end of the first day after placing 59th and 56th, respectively, in their events.
As always, the Olympics had its embarrassing exhibitions of poor sportsmanship. In the water-polo contest between Yugoslavia and Cuba, two Communist nations of decidedly divergent views, the Schwimmhalle pool wound up as bloody as the water in the Russian-Hungarian match of 1956. The Yugoslavs won, 7-5. A violent misunderstanding between the Malaysian and West German field-hockey teams caused a lengthy interruption of the game and the Games' first patient, West Germany's Uli Vos, who was admitted to the Olympic Village hospital with multiple contusions caused by Malaysian hockey sticks. West Germany won 1-0.
The modern pentathlon also proceeded in the shadow of scandal. Major Monty Mortimer, manager of the British team, charged at a news conference that the Russians had fired well in that morning's shooting only because they had been drugged. "When those Russians came to the shooting stand," he insisted, "they appeared as calm as if they had just returned from their morning constitutional." It was pointed out that the urine tests were negative, but Monty harrumphed, "Means nothing. Why, I myself have seen a competitor in Mexico City who kept a little bottle of urine hidden in his pants, which he promptly emptied into the test glass."
About one Olympic fact, however, there can be little controversy: Mark Spitz is in as complete command of his sport as any other athlete in history. There are many reasons for his proficiency, but his physical attributes alone would seem to give him a pool-length advantage over a greased porpoise. He carries 170 Ibs. easily on a tightly compacted 6-ft. frame. Hanging from his wide shoulders are a pair of long supple arms terminating in a pair of scoop-shovel hands that can pull him cleanly through the water with scarcely a ripple. He also has the curious ability to flex his lower legs slightly forward at the knees, which allows him to kick 6 to 12 in. deeper in the water than his opponents. Says his father Arnold, a production engineer in Oakland, Calif.: "Mark's whole body is so flexible that the water just seems to slip by him."
Spitz was born in Modesto, Calif., but moved with his parents to Honolulu when he was two. As his mother Lenore recalls: "We went to Waikiki every day. You should have seen that little boy dash into the ocean. He'd run like he was trying to commit suicide." That early drive may well have been imparted by his father, who admits to being a "forceful individual." His pragmatic creed, repeated often to Mark: "Swimming isn't everything. Winning is."
After four years, the Spitz family (enlarged by two daughters, Heidi and Nancy) returned to California, this time to Sacramento, where his father eventually enrolled Mark in the swimming program at the downtown Y.M.C.A. There Mark won nearly all his races; his only losses were to a pair of young pool hustlers from the nearby Arden Hills Swim Club. Not taking kindly to defeat, Arnold Spitz promptly turned his young son over to Arden Hills Coach Sherman Chavoor, who has been Mark's mentor--officially and unofficially--ever since. The boy learned fast. At age ten he set his first U.S. record--31 sec. in the 50-yd. butterfly--a record that still stands today for the nine-ten age group.
Rivalry. When Mark's family moved to Walnut Creek, Calif, in 1961, Chavoor suggested that he join the program at the prestigious Santa Clara Swim Club under the direction of crusty George Haines--who cast an appraising eye at Spitz's first few performances and predicted: "He'll probably be the best swimmer in the world." That kind of praise was not given lightly; among Haines' stable of champions was Don Schollander, who won four gold medals at Tokyo in 1964. Mark, then 14, joined the club that year, and immediately became a formidable rival of Schollander, who was four years his senior. In 1966, showing early promise as a distance swimmer, Spitz came within .2 seconds of breaking the world record in the 1,500-yd. freestyle and qualified for the A.A.U. National Championships in Lincoln, Neb. Spitz remembers: "I had two days off so I decided as a lark to swim in both the 100-and 200-yd. butterfly just to keep busy." He won the 100, but his exultation and subsequent letdown cost him the next three events.
In 1967, however, Mark loosed a freshet of stunning performances; he broke five U.S. and three world marks, took five gold medals in the Pan-American games at Winnipeg and was named Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World magazine. That did not sit too well with Schollander, who was still considered by many to be king of the aquatics hill. Haines, who had been selected to coach the U.S. men's team at Mexico City, did little to smooth over the rivalry with his candid statement: "Right now, Spitz is better than Schollander." As Chavoor puts it: "Mark wanted to be friends with Schollander and all those other big studs, but they didn't want any part of Mark. So he withdrew." As hurt as he was flippant and cocksure, Spitz made his extravagant predictions for victory in the 1968 Olympics, thereby abrading the already raw relations with his teammates. In fact, many of them began rooting for him to lose.
Mark retreated from Mexico City like a wounded shark and enrolled that winter at Indiana University, the nation's most aquatics-minded learning institution. There he came under the wise counsel of Coach Jim ("Doc") Counsilman, who got Mark off to a racing start by taking members of the team aside and quietly telling them to forget everything that they had heard about Spitz and to give him a chance. Mark soon found himself making friends and influencing people; he was eventually named co-captain of the team.
Now, after a spectacular career at Indiana (he led the team to three straight N.C.A.A. championships and broke a dozen individual world records) and his Olympic triumphs, Spitz is altogether willing to be lionized. His thick, lank hair and trim mustache (rare in the crew-cut world of swimming) are badges of studly cool. Though he may act a bit like Bobby Fischer ("he got more money for himself, which he deserved," says Mark. "I might be doing the same thing if there was professional swimming"), the image he really hankers after is Joe Namath's. He also likes to think of himself as a sort of swimming bellwether. Once at an A.A.U. meet in Houston, Spitz and other swimmers were dissatisfied with the starting blocks that were to be used. When A.A.U. officials refused the swimmers' request to change them, Mark called in a carpenter the night before the meet began and had him change one of the blocks. "Once one was changed," he recalls proudly, "they had to change them all."
Spitz still exhibits some of the same callow flippancy that has long got him into trouble. Asked if he finds any irony in his playing the conquering Jew in Germany, Mark shrugged and said, "Actually, I've always liked this country." Then he added, tapping a lampshade, "Even though this shade is probably made out of one of my aunts." Bad blood welled up last week between Mark and Teammate Steve Genter, before they competed in the 200-meter freestyle. Word got around that Mark, upon hearing that Genter had been hospitalized, had said: "Well, this may sound terrible, but at least I don't have to worry about him." The situation grew worse when Genter charged after the race that Spitz had tried to talk him out of entering. Mark's rebuttal: "I was simply as concerned as the other Americans were about Steve's condition."
Mark's ever-widening eye for the girls has also caused a few ripples. Until recently, he had been dating U.S. 800-meter Freestyle Swimmer Ann Simmons, 19. Since arriving in Munich, he has been seeing Jo Ann Harshbarger, 15, who is entered in the same event as Simmons. Though the Olympic regimen and Village logistics prevent too close a liaison, the feeling prevails among Olympians that broken hearts on land do not lead to broken records in the pool. Says an older member of the U.S. women's team: "The least he could have done was put the make on somebody from a different event." A dental student who returns to Indiana in February, Mark has also cast an interested if clinical eye on his early rival for the swimming honors, Shane Gould. Says he, clucking, "She looks pretty good with her braces off."
Palaver. All women seem to look pretty good to Mark these days. Over dinner with Coach Chavoor, he prattled incessantly about his cinematic potential: "Maybe I'll do some nudie movies," he said. "I'm hot to trot. Yeah, maybe I'll do a little trotting before we make the movie. One thing for sure, I don't want to end up like Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe. Those guys were looking for something they couldn't seem to find." Accustomed to such palaver, Chavoor offered his usual reply: "You're a nut."
The first week of the Olympics belonged to the nut and to the other swimmers and gymnasts. But the Olympic athletes were not the only young visitors attracting attention in Munich last week. The Olympics is, after all, a Jungenfestspiel, and the jungen have flocked to the merry Bavarian city by the thousands. They gathered under the spreading elm and oak trees flanking the emerald-green lawns of the Englisher Garten, playing their guitars, smoking hand-crafted cigarettes and generally ignoring what a young Iowa girl called "that silly sports effort." Munich's gala atmosphere has also drawn an older, more pecunious group: the international set, complete with titled leaders. Ensconced in carefully protected Hilton Hotel suites, far removed from the surging street crowds, are Prince Philip, Princess Margaret and their highnesses, Rainier and Grace. Unlike the youthful tourists, however, the beautiful people last week showed keen interest in some of the Olympic competition, especially the dressage qualification in horseback riding at the exclusive Riem Riding Academy, and trap and skeet shooting on the elegant Hockbruck course. The man who took home gold that he hardly needed was Neapolitan Hosteler Angelo Scalzone. The impeccable socialite was mobbed by his countrymen and unfashionably tossed into the air. This week the attention of Munich Munich--and the world--will focus on the track and field events. Here the U.S., which was universally conceded supremacy in swimming before the Games began, will face its most severe tests. The biggest single event will be the rematch in the 1,500-meter run between Kansas' erratic, enigmatic Jim Ryun and Kipchoge Keino, the Kenyan who defeated Ryun four years ago for a gold medal in the rarefied atmosphere of Mexico City. Ryun will find Munich more to his lungs' liking. But he must also contend with Keino's "rabbit," Fellow Kenyan Mike Boit, who will probably set a deadly pace early in the race and attempt to lure Ryun along. That might well leave Jim too weary to turn on his famous inishing kick, improving Keino's chances to win.
Another heralded confrontation of champions will not come off: the long-awaited pole-vault duel between Bob Seagren of the U.S. and Sweden's Kjell Isakkson, who failed to qualify for the final because of a leg injury. Seagren had his problems even without Isakkson's competition. His and his teammates' new poles were confiscated the night before the trials started on the grounds that they were too sophisticated for Olympic competition. Thus the handsome young Californian had to qualify with a pole he had previously abandoned. In other track and field events, the U.S. will be below its traditional Olympic strength. America has the weakest women's track team since before World War II, and the quadrennial Yankee domination of the dashes, high and long jumps is under serious attack from athletes of many countries, notably the determined Russians, Africans and East Germans. Two seemingly solid U.S. bets: handsome Steve Prefontaine of Eugene, Ore., in the 5,000-meter run, and the 1,600-meter relay team featuring U.S.C.'s John Smith and 1968 Gold Medal Winner Lee Evans.
As for Mark Spitz, any interest he takes in the proceedings will be nothing more than vestigial chauvinism. His battle is ended, his booty won; Spitz will swim no more. What, after all, is left for him to conquer? His feat will likely never be repeated; a move is already under way way--pressed by the Europeans and resisted by the Americans and Australians--to cut down on the number of swimming events (and thus medals) on the theory that the skills required are repetitive. Said Spitz before the games: "I want to win at Munich and then quit. I never swam for glory, only the satisfaction of being recognized as the best in the world." Beyond all doubt, he has achieved that goal.
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