Mark Spitz Is Serious About His Comeback Attempt

On the June day after Nolan Ryan, a 43-year-old adult, pitched his sixth no-hitter, Mark Spitz, a 40-year-old adult, made the customary 10-minute walk from his home in Westwood to the outdoor pool at UCLA.

He footed it up one hill, traversed a tony suburban neighborhood, stuttered down a steep incline to the gate, and then, under a splendorous California sky, slipped backward two decades in time.

In tennis shorts and a baggy T-shirt, with flecks of gray in his black hair and just the slightest hint of fleshy jiggle to his thighs, he is clearly different from the 17-to-21-year-olds who will swim with him this day. But in his demeanor and purpose he is categorically one of them.

“Hey,” chirps one of the women who swims for UCLA and trains often in the same water as Spitz. “I had my last final (exam) today.”

Spitz shoots her an offended look. “I took finals once,” he said. “Lots of them.” He shrugged, understanding the distance between them, and then bridging it with a dash of charm. “Of course that was a long time ago.”

That he pulls off such an exchange sounding neither lecherous nor insincere should come as no surprise. Spitz always had style. Eighteen years ago, when he won seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics to establish a standard of swimming excellence that has not been challenged since, his was detached cockiness, a brashness that made him distasteful to outsiders and intimidating to opponents.

Now he is coming back, a seemingly ridiculous pursuit (or is it? George Foreman? Ryan?) aimed at making the U.S. Olympic Team in 1992.

His style now is marked by good cheer and calm, and even by humor. But he still knows exactly what he is doing and that has always been the case.

“What’s important here,” Spitz said, “is the artful dodging and psychology and psyching out opponents. There’s an awful lot of people out there, sort of walking around and wondering about me.”

That there are. They wonder about the motivation for this chase, which will bring Spitz to the Olympic Trials at age 42.

Two decades ago, he was the best swimmer in history; now he is a middle-aged real estate executive, husband and father of a 10-year-old son. Is this a gimmick? And if it is not, they wonder, could Spitz really be the freak of physiology he claims to be, stretching the limits of achievement and denying age?

Point No. 1: In 1972, Spitz swam seven events. Now he will swim one -- the 100-meter butterfly. He held the world record of 54.27, and in an age when swimming records have dropped by as much as six seconds, even in sprints, the 100 ‘fly has been lowered only to 52.84, by Pablo Morales of the United States. “And he did it once and never did it again,” said Ron Ballatore, the UCLA coach who is working with Spitz.

“It’s as if time stood still in that one event,” Spitz said. “I have no clue why that is.”

Point No. 2: It doesn’t appear to be a gimmick, at least not in the traditional get-my-name-out-there sense.

True, Spitz is marketing a swimsuit line, and business has picked up since he announced his comeback. But it hardly seems worth the two to three hours a day he spends in the water with lithe, tireless children, grinding himself into condition. “At first, I thought it was strictly a publicity stunt,” said nationally ranked butterflier Byron Davis, a 19-year-old UCLA sophomore. “I didn’t think he had the heart to deal with the training. I thought, ‘What’s he in it for?’ But around Christmas practice, when he kept coming here, I realized he was really going to go for it.”

Spitz claims poverty is no issue and his address would support that. He hasn’t swum competitively yet, and might not until next winter, but he has received several six-figure offers from European promoters wishing to host his debut.

“The money I’ve been offered to swim has been outstanding, to say the least,” Spitz said. “But I’d be foolish to get in the water and swim all these hours for the money I’m going to make. If you doubled the amount made by two swimmers in a year, it wouldn’t cover my (real estate) expenses.”

Nor would it cover his expenses if he blindly chased his goal and met with dismal, embarrassing failure. In that regard, he walks a fine line. Spitz’ performances are the stuff of legend. Matjaz Kozelj, a 20-year-old UCLA freshman from Yugoslavia, remembered, “My coach told me about Mark Spitz. He said ‘My God, his stroke was perfect. You must always remember his stroke.’ ” Ballatore said, “Swimmers know Spitz like baseball players know Mickey Mantle. He’s only the greatest swimmer, ever.” But to fail is to diminish himself, to leave an image like that of Muhammad Ali quitting on his stool against Larry Holmes, far past his prime.

“They’re not going to ask for my medals back if I don’t do well,” Spitz said, undeterred.

His quest remains realistic only within a very vague framework; only Spitz knows his agenda. He has been training for eight months, and dropped 20 pounds to his glory days weight of 175. His stomach is flat, if slightly soft, and the stroke ... well, the stroke is the same. “Still great, still powerful,” Kozelj said.

Spitz trains at a slower pace than the UCLA swimmers. But in a sprint, with rest, he can beat some of them. His propensity for skipping laps and lagging behind has been chronicled in print, but Spitz claimed no deception. “Nothing is critical right now,” he said. “To grind myself to death isn’t going to do me any good. My goal is two years away.”

He grows confident when the subject narrows. “I was five body lengths better than the world when I was 22,” he said. “I had to swim against the best, plus I had pressure. Now I’ve got all that plus my age. But I’ll say this: Someday somebody will break my record of seven gold medals. But if I make the Olympic team at age 42, I’d be bold enough to say that nobody will do that after a 17-year vacation.”

And there, in a breath, is the cause and reason. The easy angle on Spitz is his re-shaping of an image, from insolence to charm. In truth, he is but a mature version of the same man -- driven, confident, and seeking a higher place in history. He is at peace when he climbs into the pool and the water darkens his hair. “Wouldn’t it be nice if Muhammad Ali could snap his fingers and get in shape like he was in his prime,” Spitz said, “and we’d all know if he was a better heavyweight champion than Mike Tyson.”

The point is, he can’t.