Spitz Chasing Glory and Gold

You remember Mark Spitz. He won seven gold medals for swimming in the 1972 Munich Olympics.

After that he did a TV special with Bob Hope and a few commercials, then married and retired from public life. Now he’s back -- not on TV (except for interviews) but in the water. Spitz, 40, hopes to make the 1992 U.S. Olympic team and compete in the 100-meter butterfly event in Barcelona, Spain.

Before his recent comeback attempt, Mark Spitz had become what every top athlete inevitably becomes: a has-been.

If glory gained through sports is the most intense, the most euphoric kind of glory, it is also the most fleeting, the most transient. The buzzer sounds, the run scores, you bask in your 15 minutes of Andy Warhol celebrity, and then it’s all over, like the sweet prime of youth itself.

A has-been might be better than a never-was, but nothing compares with being on top, particularly once you’ve been there, however brief the stay.

Just ask Mark Spitz. Or Frank Gifford, who years ago came out of retirement just to play one more season of professional football.

Or Muhammad Ali, who stepped into the ring with Larry Holmes long since he had become The Greatest. Or Mickey Mantle, his knees a mess of pulled ligaments and torn cartilage when he finally called it quits in 1969.

Or weight-lifter Norbert Schemansky, who 25 years ago at age 41 pushed himself through painful, grueling workouts in preparation for what would have been his fifth Olympics.

Now approaching 41 myself, I can relate to Schemansky’s ordeal, his frustration with being unable to coax his tired body into performing the way it once did, his constant battle with injuries that in middle-age multiply faster and take longer to heal.

While I never competed on his lofty level, I did manage to win five South Atlantic weightlifting championships, a gold medal in the 1973 Maccabiah Games in Israel and four Maryland State bench press championships, the last being in 1978. On a purely physical level, those were the best years of my life, a time when I could bench press 400 pounds, clean and jerk 350 and squat 500 just about any time I wanted.

It was a time when my body and the will to compete worked in tandem. Indeed, when the latter called for weight to be lifted, the former asked, how much?

Now, though, my body is no longer so compliant. Instead of asking how much, it’s, are you sure? A reticence born from nagging soreness (elbows, knees, hips) and the fear that “maxing out” will result in something more devastating, like a torn muscle or tendon, injuries common among aging lifters.