Olympian Masters ?

"Did you ever have the feeling of vuja de'? Yes that's right, vuja de'. It's the uncanny feeling that none of this has ever happened before." - Johnny Carson :agree: Yeah, I have that feeling right now, tinged with a nice dash of purist/elitist ______. :shakeshead: Ugh. I hope this isn't the "face" of masters swimming. Insinuation, accusation and detective work by infrequent posters who only post on "Olympic" threads. I'm happy to be branded as mediocre so no one begins an investigation of my would-be college records. I'm heading back to my measley gridge races with the non-Spitzian types. Peace out. Frank: You've read Deep Water. Nice aside about an Olympic alternate backstroker.

Imposter is too strong. Would you prefer charlatan, fraud or faker? Mark Spitz is not a registered member of this forum, so I don’t expect to see him jumping up and down here. However, in conversations I’ve had with him on a similar topic, he has a rather purest attitude about elite swimmers and he would likely use terms stronger than imposter for anyone falsely claiming to be an Olympian. If you do a search in the 1 hour results for 2004 a Mark Spitz swam it. About the right age, right location. Only funny thing is the distance, only did 3990 yards. He either swam fly, or is out of shape for Mark Spitz. Does anyone know if this is the real Spitz. www.usms.org/.../1hrresultsswmrs.pdf

Does anyone know if this is the real Spitz. I'm sure it is. He is a Masters swimmer. Rob just meant that he's not a user of these Discussion Forums. And 3990 yards isn't too bad for a 54-year-old sprinter, is it? :) Anna Lea

Carl: That is the one and only and same swimmer, Mark Spitz. I know someone on the UCLA team and they said he showed up at practice and swimmers were swimming this and he really didn't really want to do it. He did it as part of a practice session and that is the result of that. I don't think he was serious about this and did it as a fitness swim. I give him credit for doing it and turning it in. I do remember in 1989 of Mark Spitz trying to get in shape and make a comeback. I do not believe that he never ever swam competitively in either a Sanctioned USA or USS swimming meet as it was called or a USMS Masters meet at the time. He was 39 at the time and the USMS Record for the 100 Meter Fly for the 35-39 age group was held by Freddy Schlicher at :58.5 and I was wondering if Mark could get close or break that record. In the 2 year period, he got his time down to :58.03, which would be a great USMS time and World Record in Masters swimming. However, he was a far cry from the :55.59 Olympic Trial qualifing time and the :54.27 time he did that won the gold medal for the 100 Meter Fly in 1972. This was still pretty amazing because he took 17 years off of swimming competition. Bottom line from all of this is that if he wants to I sure he would be an excellent masters competitior but he probably does not want to be and that is ok to. By the way I saw that you swam for Ohio State University and went to see if you knew a friend of mine that I swam with in High School. I went to this site here www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com/.../osumswimrecords.pdf and could not find you. I am not saying you are an impostor but maybe they don't have you down as a letter winner. I see some Masters swimmers that I know and compete against in USMS like George Schmidt and Lonnie Harrison. I also see USMS Executive Director Todd Smith there. Well, unfortunately I didn't letter ( I was a scrub) and Carl Spackler is Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack not my real name. I'm one of "those people" that uses an alias on message boards. Thanks for all the feedback on Spitz everyone. I had kind of figured he was just doing a workout swim or something. I didn't mean to imply that 3990 was "bad", but since my PB was 4440 when I was 50, I couldn't believe that I had beaten Mark Spitz . No doubt if he trained for it and gave even a moderate effort, he would be dusting us all. Well, except Jim McConica. ( Didn't McConica just miss the 72 Olympics in the 200 free? ) Feel free to PM me about your friend. I saw a lot of familiar names on the link. Thanks for that.

Gail, Is the list published somewhere? If not, if you could e-mail it to me I could capture it as a PDF document and attach it to this thread. That way we could all look for "missing" names. Ron Neugent swims in my LMSC; he was a member of the U.S. 1980 team. Anna Lea Anna Lea and Paul: If you want to find a list of all swimmers that have made the USA Olympic Roster and the results of all USA Olympic Trials and Qualifing Selection meet as they used to call it back many years ago, you can find it here on the USA Swimming site. www.usaswimming.org/.../DesktopDefault.aspx If you see any masters swimmers that are not on Gail's list, report them to Gail. This list obviously does not include USMS swimmers that represented other countries in the Olympics. Also watch out for changed names. For instance Gail Peters is Gail Roper on the 1952 list.

Frank.....thanks for the link but the point I was making is that USMS should look into finding away to both honor and acknowledge those athletes who are now a part of this organization. Ms. Fox...according to Sam Bill Barrett is alive and swimming with Brophy here in AZ. I've already started trying to hunt him down as he would be an invaluable asset on our 45+ medley relay! Fort...as usual I'm always the last to know these things! Somehow can't imagine any fireworks not having Geek involved...or one of the many anonymous Ion's that are floating around here!

I know of several alternates to the Olympic Team in 1968; donnaDonna, In all my searching for Olympic Swimmers, I have yet to come across a roster of alternates. Could you please provide me with a link to any site with this information? I would love to have information on all of our alternates. Also, 63.241.144.244/.../Default.aspx has a good listing of 680+ Olympic Swimmers, with accomplishments and photos.

I find it fascinating that the history of swimming's record keeping is the only one in the world that has been perfected and all data is completely accurate. I know of no other organization worldwide that can make this claim, so I commend you all for such outstanding work. And Rob is correct in his statements about Mr. Spitz; Mark would not have "kindly" used the words charltan, imposter, etc., for those people who claim titles and did not earn them. Mark would have not been so diplomatic and I wouldn't blame him. But we all know that Mark Spitz did things swimming wise that really haven't been done since; the guy was blazingly fast. I remember when Doug Russell took the 100 fly away from him (once); it wasn't a pretty picture, but Mark dug his heels in and showed everyone years later. What a competitor. Sometimes, there are a few really great swimmers that are developed and to people who do not know them, they appear arrogant. I think this is confidence that they know they need to stay at such an elite level. And outside the pool, they are differently nice. Kind of reminds me of artists and musicians. There was another thread about our Olympic heros; you know, there are just so many talented people, it's very hard to pick just one. I'd have to say: all of them. They continue to inspire all of us and, hopefully, our younger generation. donna

Yes, I did swim in the 1952 Olympics in the 200m breaststroke.............that was butterfly with a breaststroke kick then. I injured my ankle by pulling a ligament but against doctors orders I did swim. There is a DNF by my name that means "did not final", not did not finish. I was Gail Peters then. The water was 71 degrees, the air 41 in the mornings..............this was before they had rules on temperature controls. And the sun never went down, we were so close to the Arctic circle.

I have heard of others claiming to be alternates of some Olympic Team... "Did you ever have the feeling of vuja de'? Yes that's right, vuja de'. It's the uncanny feeling that none of this has ever happened before." - Johnny Carson :agree: