Michael Phelps vs Mark Spitz
"I want to be the first Michael Phelps, not the second Mark Spitz." It's a great sentiment, and ironically clashes with Spitz's comment about "My greatest accolade was that at one point in one time I became a matter of measure which somebody else judged themselves by."
I guess now it is really time to start talking about it. I was actually saying this before the games started: Phelps does not need to win 7 gold medals in order to be the greatest swimmer ever; he already is. One thing that doesn’t get mentioned enough, and I think most people don’t realize, is that for the same medal Phelps has to swim 50% farther. This is because they now have to swim semifinals for events under 400 meters. So for instance, where their individual events overlap (200 Free, 100 Fly, 200 Fly), Spitz swam the prelims and finals of each totaling 1000 meters of racing where Phelps swims the prelims, semis and finals totaling 1500 meters of racing. This is to win the same gold medals.
Now I suppose I should also address the comments made recently by Spitz. I don’t really want to get into the middle of “he said they said,” but it does appear that Spitz could have picked up a phone and talked to someone from the IOC, US team or NBC if he really wanted to be there to see the medal count that Phelps is racking up. More to my point are some other comments he has made such as, “I could have won 8 gold medals if I was given the chance.” Spitz is referring to the fact that the 50 freestyle was not an event in the Munich games, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t given a chance. Nobody said he wasn’t allowed to train for and swim the IMs. He certainly had the opportunity to swim the 200 or 400 IM like Phelps; in fact Spitz didn’t swim a single race longer than 200 meters (and as mentioned never swam a semifinal). He was a power sprinter, and he had and apparently still has a pretty big ego. In ’68 Spitz held 10 WRs and he predicted he would win 6 golds in Mexico City, but he only got 2 and they were relays. At one point he said, “I believe truly that records are meant to be broken.” Yet now that it is happening he is complaining about not being given a chance to win 8.
PS - Mark Spitz is still the man, Phelps is just THE man.
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