COUNTDOWN TO 2000: A day-by-day recap of some of the most important sports moments of the 20th century. / SEPT. 4, 1972 : With Seven Golds, He Left the World in His Wake

He was an athlete in search of redemption, hoping to throw off the “choker” yoke he had carried around for four years. On this date 27 years ago, Mark Spitz did it. And how.

When he approached the finish of the United States’ 400-meter relay final at the Munich Olympics, in first place as usual, he had this thought: “Just a few more strokes and it will be over. . . . I couldn’t wait to get out of the pool.”

Has any athlete ever ended a career like this? With seven gold medals at the Olympic Games?

Spitz, a 22-year-old Indiana University dental student from Carmichael, Calif., had predicted four years earlier he would win five, maybe six, golds at the Mexico City Olympics. He won two, both of them in relay events.

Here’s what he won in Munich in ‘72:

* 200-meter butterfly in 2 minutes 0.70 seconds, a world record.

* 400-freestyle relay, swam the anchor leg on a team that set a world record, 3:36.42.

* 200 free, 1:52.78, a world record.

* 100 butterfly, 54.27, a world record.

* 800-free relay, anchored for a team that set a world record, 7:35.78.

* 100 free, 51.22, a world record.

* 400-medley relay, swam the fly leg on a team that clocked 3:48.16, a world record.

Seven events, seven golds, seven world records.

His motivation? Mexico City.

“Ability, ironclad training and rage in my stomach has proved that I did not show my true worth in 1968,” he said after winning the final gold.

Also on this date: In 1986, Hank Greenberg, baseball’s first $100,000-a-year player, died of cancer at 75. He chased Babe Ruth’s one-season home run record of 60 throughout the summer of 1938, finishing with 58. He ended his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who paid him $100,000 in 1947. . . . In 1927, Ruth hit his 44th home run of the season and the 400th of his career, at Philadelphia. . . . In 1996, Babe Dahlgren, the Yankee who replaced Lou Gehrig at first base in 1939, died in Arcadia at 84.