Word: spitz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This week's cover story on Mark Spitz, America's secret weapon for reversing the gold flow, goes well beyond his performance at the Olympic Games. Associate Editor Ray Kennedy obtained a rare interview with Spitz that provides glimpses of the athlete's personality and his recollection of a religious slur at the 1968 Olympics. Champions, it turns out, are highly resilient people...
...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...
...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...
...American Mark Spitz, Munich represents a second chance at superstardom. At 18 he entered the Mexico Games with two world records under his belt and brash predictions that he would win six gold medals. When he finished up with two gold, one silver and one bronze-a tidy tally for almost any other competitor-he felt "downright depressed." In truth, he had not swum his best. But Spitz seems to have regained confidence without cockiness. Though he now holds three world records in freestyle and butterfly, Spitz may not compete in the full range of individual and relay events...
...Gould of Australia has already established herself as the greatest female swimmer in history. Using her powerful shoulders and a slow, two-beat kick that barely ripples the water, she has set world records for every women's freestyle distance from 100 to 1,500 meters. More than Spitz did at Mexico, cool, unpretentious Shane faces the pressure of proving herself in the tense, compacted competition of the Olympics. She is determined to compete in the four women's freestyle events and, if the scheduling is right, she may swim in three others. In short, Sydney Schoolgirl Shane...