Word: spitz
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...superhero all your life," said swimmer Matt Biondi, finishing fifth in the 100-m freestyle Tuesday, "but today my cape fell off." Only briefly, as it turned out. By week's end Biondi earned two medals for a lifetime total of 11, a record he shares with Mark Spitz...
...whoops! In 22 seconds the race is over. But when the bubbles clear, it is not The Star Spangled Banner playing over the Bernat Picornell Pool but the strains of another anthem. And the man who lays claim to being the new Johnny Weissmuller, the new Mark Spitz, the new Matt Biondi, is a fellow from Volgograd named Popov, winner of the 50-m free and the fastest swimmer of the XXVth Olympiad...
Never getting out of condition is the best way to maintain an athletic career. Top athletes now train year-round instead of seasonally. "It's not advancing age that necessarily hurts performance," says American physiologist Steve Fleck, "it's deconditioning." Experts believe that swimmer Mark Spitz, 42, whose technique in the butterfly stroke is still regarded as ideal, failed in his comeback bid earlier this year in part because he had been out of condition for 17 years and did not do enough resistance training. Nonetheless, notes Fleck, "the trend is in the direction of the better performances coming from...
After Mark Spitz won seven gold medals at Munich in 1972, he retired into legendhood -- save for a brief belly flop back into racing last year. Matt Biondi, who took relay gold in Los Angeles in 1984 and seven medals, five gold, in Seoul in 1988, retired too. But he unretired a lot quicker. His passion the past four years has been to create career opportunities for mature swimmers like him -- seeking stipends and commercial sponsorship so post- collegiate athletes can hang on. He succeeded. His six-figure income reflects prize purses and exhibition fees...
That dourness seems to change as soon as Popov, 21, hits the water. "While I'm swimming, I sing songs in my mind," he says. His career is following an upbeat tune. An avid admirer of Mark Spitz, the Russian youth won the Soviet junior championship as a backstroker at 14. Since 1990, when his coach persuaded him to switch to freestyle, he has been nearly unbeatable. He has defeated his main rival, Matt Biondi, in their last six meetings. "At first I thought that he didn't take me seriously," says the younger swimmer. But Biondi takes him seriously...