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.
I knew Karen in school at UCLA (same major, and both lifeguards* on campus). She also swam in the 76 games in Montreal. As I recall, she had taken most of the next three years off after 72, then started training in earnest. She was just touched out for bronze in the 200 fly.
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* Needless to say, Karen was "just a little bit faster" than the rest of us lifeguards. We had to swim a 400m for time periodically, maybe once a quarter. I don't remember what the time standard was (fast enough that some lifeguards had to really push to make it), but Karen seemed to just swim it easy and still finished well ahead of the rest of us. :D
Go Bruins! I wrote my thesis at the Rec Center pool in 70/71 and fooled around with the Rec swim club. I had a GF who had almost made the olympic trials in the fly and we tried some couples competition (remember?) but she was out of my league.
I knew Karen in school at UCLA (same major, and both lifeguards* on campus). She also swam in the 76 games in Montreal. As I recall, she had taken most of the next three years off after 72, then started training in earnest. She was just touched out for bronze in the 200 fly.
Skip
* Needless to say, Karen was "just a little bit faster" than the rest of us lifeguards. We had to swim a 400m for time periodically, maybe once a quarter. I don't remember what the time standard was (fast enough that some lifeguards had to really push to make it), but Karen seemed to just swim it easy and still finished well ahead of the rest of us. :D
Go Bruins! I wrote my thesis at the Rec Center pool in 70/71 and fooled around with the Rec swim club. I had a GF who had almost made the olympic trials in the fly and we tried some couples competition (remember?) but she was out of my league.
