Spitz Chases Olympic Butterflies in His 40s

It is a matter of major debate today whether George Foreman or Mark Spitz is making the more notable comeback.

Both are engaged in sports in which principals are known to go into the water, and the undertaking of each is assessed as mildly impossible for those in their athletic dotage, which is 40, give or take.

Foreman promises that he is going to regain the world heavyweight boxing championship. And it is the view of Spitz that when gold medals are proffered at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, one will be handed him for work performed in the 100-meter butterfly.

If Spitz follows the pattern of Foreman, he will want to visit a pool in Santa Monica and knock off a challenger in a warmup race. The guy will be a fry cook billed as Buster Chlorine.

Then embarked on the comeback trail, Spitz will leave in his wake a string of stiffs in Atlantic City, Houston and Las Vegas.

By the time of the Barcelona Games, Mark will have turned 42, just right, he assures you, for taking the measure of young studs not wholly focused on the mission.

“Do you know what it’s like to be competing at 20?” asks Spitz. “You’ve got dating problems. You’ve got exams at school. You’ve got anxieties. In your 40s, all that is behind you. You are mentally ready.”

Mainly for that reason, Nolan Ryan in his 40s is going great. Tommy John and Phil Niekro succeeded. And Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did so well that he was taken on tour, picking up a flute, a Persian carpet, a Harley-Davidson, cowboy boots, conga drums and a seven-day cruise to Mexico.

Abdul-Jabbar would still be traveling on the farewell circuit, except it occurred to him it might be more exciting to train for the next Olympics in the backstroke.

At this point, Spitz is the holder of nine gold medals, of which seven were won in 1972 at Munich, whence he made a departure not conventional for an Olympic hero.

It was a time at which 11 Israelis were murdered by Arab terrorists, and, deducing that Spitz, who is Jewish, might have been a high-priority target, the U.S. Olympic security authorities sneaked him out in a cloak-and-dagger operation that landed him in London.

There, he was met at the airport, confined to the floor of a car and driven to a hotel, where he spent the night under guard.

The next day, he was flown to Los Angeles, remaining under protective custody.

The mental damage incurred by this dark experience can’t be measured, but his conception of winning the butterfly at 42 might be ascribed to the trauma.

“I am still six to nine months away from prime shape,” says Spitz, who works out faithfully five days a week. “The butterfly is a technical type of stroke, a break for older guys who needn’t rely on raw strength. Technique pays off in a lot of pursuits.”

Safecracking would be a striking example.

“What inspired this comeback?” Spitz is asked.

“My father-in-law thought I was getting too fat. He said to me, ‘Why don’t you get off your can and exercise?’ I thought about that. And I concluded that if I got off my can and exercised, I might as well do it for stakes that are interesting.”

What has happened points up the danger of challenging your son-in-law. You say to him, “Hey, supposing, for a change, you bring a buck into the house.” He won’t do something standard, such as get a job. He’ll rob a bank.

In the period that followed Munich, Spitz tried show business, appearing one time with Bob Hope in a skit in which Mark played a dentist, working on Hope.

Viewers watched anxiously, wondering whether the two would revive “Dr. Cronkite,” the deathless act of Smith and Dale, in which a guy sitting nervously in the waiting room hears the patient scream, “Oh, you butcher!”

But Spitz went on to other roles, receiving an offer envied by anyone stepping before the camera. He was tendered the opportunity to be the first Jewish Tarzan.

“Up until then, some 19 guys had played Tarzan,” recalls Mark. “But never a Jew.”

“What a tribute to your people,” an agent said rapturously. “Five thousand years of suffering--and one of their own gets to swing from a branch and call his elephant.”

Surprisingly, Spitz rejected the part and soon left show business, drifting to real estate, and, eventually, something of more vital social concern, the 100-meter butterfly.

You don’t want to sell the butterfly short. It has utilitarian advantages not fully explored. If you can’t swim the butterfly, you can always chase one.