8 Gold Medals

It's not anywhere near as impressive as say, the musical output of Led Zeppelin, or like when that Klaatu dude made the whole world stand still...but nevertheless, 8 golds in one Olympics is a stunning accomplishment. I'm glad that I got to watch each of those fabulous swims.

It's too bad that the other relay members will probably fade from memory. Do you remember who swam on the gold medal relays with Mark Spitz? You don't? Uh...well, then, um, I was one of them!

No, I can't show you my medals. I, uh...lost them. In a flood. No, wait, I mean that I had to sell them to pay for the emergency brain surgery I needed when I fell off the dock while escaping with a tricorder full of energy captured from nuclear wessels. Or something like that.

OK. OK, you caught me, I confess. I've never won any Olympic gold. The closest I've come is winning my heat at a "B" meet in the Great Plains League Invitational in Wellington, Kansas. It's not going to get me any six-figure endorsement deals, but I have to say that they had really nice medals for a town that had no indoor plumbing.

But I did actually hang out with Spitz for a while. In fact, he and I got pretty close, for a time.

And by that, I mean that I once stood within a few feet of him for a few seconds. It was at the 1973 National Swimming Championships, which happened to be in Kansas City that year. My roommate and I and a few other Wichita Swim Club buddies went over from Lawrence to watch the meet. It was pretty cool to actually see the best swimmers in the country in person.

Spitz had retired after the '72 Olympics, but he attended the meet, probably to see if any of his records would be broken. At one point, he stood in an accessible area of the pool deck, so we each took turns standing beside him while the others took movies of it. No, he wasn't wearing his gold around his neck, and no, he wasn't aware of us in any way other than perhaps being annoyed by the cloud of hovering teens swarming around him like pesky insects.

I do still have the films of this historic close encounter, but haven't yet transferred it to a digital format. I'll post it one of these days, if I can. But I'll go ahead and share a couple of observations right now.

• Unlike Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz isn't very tall. And because his knees are double-jointed and actually flex backward when he's in a relaxed standing position, he appears even shorter. From the magnitude of his performance, I had expected a bigger guy. If I had put on another 20 pounds of muscle or so, we'd have been about the same size. And I had a mustache, too...we almost could've been twins.
• Spitz was obviously delighted when nobody broke his records. He was high-fiving his minions, and grinning from ear to ear each time the competitors swam one of his events, but failed to equal his times.
• And here's a note to all the teenagers out there: no matter how cool you think you are because you're standing next to a heroic Olympic figure, you might not actually want to film it -- because quite honestly, you're still a dork.
• I don't care if my dorkitude has been captured on film for all of posterity to laugh at...it was still pretty cool to be standing next to Mark Spitz. Maybe I'll have a chance to stand next to Phelps one of these days; and will be able to grab photographic evidence of how much shorter, older, and dorkier I am than he is. Cool.

Will Phelps' achievement ever be equalled or bettered? Yeah, I would say that it's a virtual certainty. It probably won't be for a while, but maybe some kid I see wading around in the activity pool at the Ridge will be the one to do it. And maybe he'll tell a very old Bob Costas that he got his first swimming inspiration from watching my Masters Team.

That would make my day.