Until just a few weeks ago, when Michael Phelps grabbed his eighth gold of the Beijing Games, the record as the winner of most gold medals in one Olympic Games belonged to Mark Spitz. 

In 1972 the American swimmer won seven gold medals, making him the greatest Olympian ever for 36 years.

In The Winning Zone speaks exclusively Spitz, an Olympic legend...

WZ: For young people who want to become winners, what would you say are the key qualities that they need?

When I speak all over the world, I came up with this saying.  ‘It’s the mystery, the magic, the wonder and the innocence of never having done it before. Those create the seeds of creativity that will develop into somebody’s success story.’ 

That success story may not ultimately lead to a gold medal, a world champion or a professional.  But it will, for sure, make you better tomorrow than you are today. 

Those are the inspirations that create and instil a sense of self-confidence that make you say ‘I do want to come to that programme, I do want to be there with people I may make friends with, I feel comfortable and confident that I can be a better person in life.  And that is something that my coaches instilled in me.

WZ: You made a comeback in 1992, when you were 42.  What fuelled your desire to do that?

The answer is two-fold.  First, somebody gave me the inspiration by telling me that there were athletes of the same age as me who were swimming in Masters programmes, guys of my generation who had been world record holders, and that they were swimming faster times than they did when they were twenty.

So I looked at that, and thought ‘big deal’.  But then I was told that if I could do the 100m butterfly in the same as I did when I was twenty, it would still be the third fastest time in the world.  And the two men that were faster than me had also retired!

So I mentioned this idea to someone, and it was written in a newspaper.  And all of a sudden somebody [it was film-maker Bud Greenspan] came up to me and said they would pay me a million dollars if I went back to the water.  And the commitment was very difficult for me to make.  It wasn’t so much the money.  It was three years of nothing but swimming.  In the morning I would work out for two hours and 45 minutes, then another two hours in the evening, every day.  Learning how to compete again.

But I took the challenge.  It was money-driven, but it was also the fact that I was asking myself, ‘could I really do that?’ 

The experience was absolutely the most positive experience I could have known. One, it showed my boy what the commitment was to be a good athlete.  Number two, I was ranked in the top ten in the world.  I just wished my sport was tennis, because that could have got me into a quarter final or semi final. 

But my event was in hundredths of a second.  If I had to do it again, I would.  It is a real good character builder.  And it didn’t take anything away from what I achieved.  To be 42 years old and in the top ten was very positive.  And my inspiration was that when I decided to make a comeback, Pablo Morales, the then world record holder, came out of retirement, and he won in Barcelona.

WZ: Does having a dominant guy in the pool, like Michael Phelps, put other athletes off?  If they have to spend hundreds of hours in the pool, knowing they probably won’t win?

Well, you could be the one guy that throws him off the throne.  I personally think that most competitors at that level would never be discouraged.  They would only be inspired to say ‘he will drag me along, and make me a better athlete’.

Most people I know wake up in the morning with a positive attitude.  I’m 58 years old, and I’ve never met anybody who wakes up in the morning and says ‘I would like to lose today, I hope I get second.  As a matter of fact, I hope I lose my job. I hope I get sick.’  Nobody thinks like that, everybody thinks positively. So he is an inspiration for that.

RO
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