Word: spitz
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...Mark Spitz September...
...Oleg packed five bags and left everything else behind when the doors at last were opened for Jewish families to emigrate from the U.S.S.R? He had done it for his children. Swimming was going to be Lenny's ticket to acceptance, success. Wasn't America the home of Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi...
...Games are resilient, the Olympic spirit unsinkable, because the Games produce heroes, and it is in the nature of heroism to vanquish all opponents. When a Jim Thorpe or a Wilma Rudolph or a Mark Spitz or a Nadia Comaneci wins an event, he or she has not only defeated an opponent but has also put out of mind the criticism of the Games. Unlikely heroes emerge. Our aspirations and hopes become hitched for a few days or hours to a person whose face we have never seen before and whose name we have never heard...
This happens sometimes: an athlete announces a bid for multiple medals and lays siege to the spotlight. Spitz, Heiden, Lewis, Blair. Michael Johnson with his 200-m/400-m double an Olympiad ago. "It's great to be the headliner," says Johnson, who seems relieved that he qualified to run only the 400 m this time around. "But it's very intense, an awful lot of pressure...
...premature to group Thorpe with superstars like Mark Spitz and Alexander Popov as an all-time great, but if he swims in three Olympics, as he plans to, and dominates as he has in lesser meets since 1998, he will belong in that company. He has already staked a claim: the swimming community thought it had seen a race for the ages when Australian Kieren Perkins recorded 3:43.80 in the 400 m at the 1994 world championships in Rome. The field trailed 10 m behind, an eternity. But Thorpe has since lowered that mark three times, most recently...