I think that Johnny Weissmuller was better for his time than Mark Spitz because he was a natural. He workout not that much compared to Spitz who workout several times more yardage. Granted, Spitz did have the ideal olympics that porbably no other swimmer will do again. There is too much competition today compared to 1972 and there are few freestylers who can also won butterfly at the international level these days. This is for fun.
During the 2000 Olympics, Cadillac had a promotion on their website, called something like the Swim Race of the Ages. They had a virtual swim race between the greats of various ages, and you were supposed to choose who would win. They gave you each swimmer's best time for the 100m free, along with all the pluses and minuses of the various swimmers. For example, Johnny Weismuller had to wear a wool suit, didn't do flip turns, and swam with his head out of the water (I always thought he did that just for the Tarzan movies, so the camera could see his face, but it turns out that he really did swim that way all the time). Mark Spitz had the advantage of training more than Weismuller did, but not nearly as much as later swimmers such as Matt Biondi. He also was still doing a pretty flat start in his prime. The computer was going to equalize all the swimmers (Weismuller would get extra credit for his wool suit), and then choose who would win this hypothetical race. Anyway, I read through all the stuff about the various swimmers (in addition to Weismuller, Spitz, and Biondi, there was also Don Schollander and Buster Crabbe, and maybe some others I'm forgetting now), and when all was said and done I just felt that Mark Spitz was just the best swimmer I've ever seen. So I picked Spitz and forgot about it.
Just before Christmas 2000 I got a package in the mail from Cadillac. It seems the computer had picked Spitz too, and the names of all the entrants who had picked Spitz were put into a pile, and winners were drawn from the pile. I had won a Kodak digital camera! I didn't even realize it was a contest with prizes. I was just interested in the hypothetical question of who would win such a race! I was happy enough that the computer agreed with me that Mark Spitz would win, but the camera was really the icing on the cake.
During the 2000 Olympics, Cadillac had a promotion on their website, called something like the Swim Race of the Ages. They had a virtual swim race between the greats of various ages, and you were supposed to choose who would win. They gave you each swimmer's best time for the 100m free, along with all the pluses and minuses of the various swimmers. For example, Johnny Weismuller had to wear a wool suit, didn't do flip turns, and swam with his head out of the water (I always thought he did that just for the Tarzan movies, so the camera could see his face, but it turns out that he really did swim that way all the time). Mark Spitz had the advantage of training more than Weismuller did, but not nearly as much as later swimmers such as Matt Biondi. He also was still doing a pretty flat start in his prime. The computer was going to equalize all the swimmers (Weismuller would get extra credit for his wool suit), and then choose who would win this hypothetical race. Anyway, I read through all the stuff about the various swimmers (in addition to Weismuller, Spitz, and Biondi, there was also Don Schollander and Buster Crabbe, and maybe some others I'm forgetting now), and when all was said and done I just felt that Mark Spitz was just the best swimmer I've ever seen. So I picked Spitz and forgot about it.
Just before Christmas 2000 I got a package in the mail from Cadillac. It seems the computer had picked Spitz too, and the names of all the entrants who had picked Spitz were put into a pile, and winners were drawn from the pile. I had won a Kodak digital camera! I didn't even realize it was a contest with prizes. I was just interested in the hypothetical question of who would win such a race! I was happy enough that the computer agreed with me that Mark Spitz would win, but the camera was really the icing on the cake.
