Today is the 40th Anniversary of Mark Spitz winning his 7 gold medals at the 1972 Olympics. A story is posted here
www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/.../31884.asp
To celebrate this accomplishment ESPN Classic TV station is showing all of the USA Gold medal winning swimmers today including all of Mark Spitz's races. Its on right now and will be on tonight. Its on for about 3 hours.
Whats interesting is to see the suits, no goggles, and basically no underwater swimming on either the starts or the turns.
Up to that point, Jerry was hot in the 100 Free. He split 50.78 going 3rd in the 400 Free Relay and really put the USA ahead by a very comfortable margin. Spitz swam anchor and swam a 50.91 and going into this last individual event Jerry had gone faster than Spitz in both the heats and semi finals. This was going to be his toughest race and situation was similar to when Phelps had to swim Cavic in the 100 Fly. Spitz took off and was always in the lead unlike other times where he came back on the field.
One of the races they did not show was the Men's 400 IM in which Gunnar Larson and Tim McKee tied to the one hundredth of a second and had to dismantle the timing system and awarded the gold medal to Larson because his time was 2 thousands of a second faster. Since then they found this to be inaccurate and have never done this again, and have always awarded two gold medal. Since then 2 races have ended like this and those are the 1984 Women's 100 Free and the 2000 Men's 50 Free.
I swam with Jerry that summer. When he went to the trials, I think he was ranked 1st in the world in the 200 free. That was his first event at the trials and he didn't make the finals. Coach Mac later said that after the race Jerry blamed only himself and committed to make the team in subsequent events. The next day, he got his first spot in the 100 fly.
I remember the Larson/McKee race decision. At the time, we were told that the 'winner' could be determined by technology.
Up to that point, Jerry was hot in the 100 Free. He split 50.78 going 3rd in the 400 Free Relay and really put the USA ahead by a very comfortable margin. Spitz swam anchor and swam a 50.91 and going into this last individual event Jerry had gone faster than Spitz in both the heats and semi finals. This was going to be his toughest race and situation was similar to when Phelps had to swim Cavic in the 100 Fly. Spitz took off and was always in the lead unlike other times where he came back on the field.
One of the races they did not show was the Men's 400 IM in which Gunnar Larson and Tim McKee tied to the one hundredth of a second and had to dismantle the timing system and awarded the gold medal to Larson because his time was 2 thousands of a second faster. Since then they found this to be inaccurate and have never done this again, and have always awarded two gold medal. Since then 2 races have ended like this and those are the 1984 Women's 100 Free and the 2000 Men's 50 Free.
I swam with Jerry that summer. When he went to the trials, I think he was ranked 1st in the world in the 200 free. That was his first event at the trials and he didn't make the finals. Coach Mac later said that after the race Jerry blamed only himself and committed to make the team in subsequent events. The next day, he got his first spot in the 100 fly.
I remember the Larson/McKee race decision. At the time, we were told that the 'winner' could be determined by technology.
