Word: swimmers
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...rapid white-water stream of them. When a Swiss timepiece was unable to choose between Carrie Steinseifer and Nancy Hogshead, duplicate gold medals were struck, and naturally those two were immediately dubbed the Gold Dust Twins. From their wide expressions on the unusually crowded victory stand, neither swimmer minded the company or gave much thought to absent East Germans. Regarding the boycott generally, the athletes know where the asterisks go, and will cheerfully tell anyone else...
Relieving some of the embarrassment of U.S. riches, the most imposing swimmer on the premises was actually a West German, Michael Gross, 20, a world-champion freestyler and butterflyer with the wingspan of a pterodactyl. But even he was overhauled in an exciting U.S. relay and by a 17-year-old Aussie, Jon Sieben, in a butterfly. Though the Australians and also the Canadians had their moments, the drama at the pool was fundamentally and expectably intramural...
Nancy Hogshead of the U.S. had qualified fastest on the first day of competition, but only marginally. She is 22, a prelaw student at Duke and old for a swimmer, like many of the other veterans on a squad that regards itself as covered by vines and lichen. Of 43 team members, 36 are 18 or older. Hogshead was on the 1980 Olympic team, then slogged through the emotional swamp caused by the U.S. boycott. The next year, worn by a practice routine that had her up at 4:45 every morning from seventh grade through high school, she quit...
That was the splashy beginning of a week of competition that had both swimmers and sinkers in the audience awash in noisy enthusiasm. And on the point of drowning in home-grown chauvinism, it should be said. When it was over, the U.S. had won 20 firsts in 29 events (counting the unprecedented double as one). Raw-meat roars of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"-part innocent glee and part boorish excess-greeted the appearance of each U.S. swimmer and the bemedaling of each new national hero...
Gross, never mind upstart antipodeans, was the dominant swimmer of the meet. He is a very tall, haunted-looking fellow whose nickname is the Albatross, and he soared above everyone else on air currents only he was able to find. He is 6 ft. 7½ in. tall and so thin he looks frail. His arm span, which on average should equal roughly his height, is an astonishing 7 ft. 4 in. He is the only male swimmer since Mark Spitz to hold world records in two strokes at the same time, and the combination of his success...