Mark Spitz biography

 Mark Spitz biography

 Mark Spitz, in full Mark Andrew Spitz, (born February 10, 1950, Modesto, California, U.S.), American swimmer who, on the 1972 Olympics in Munich, turned the primary athlete to win seven gold medals in a single Games.

Like many different excellent American swimmers, Spitz skilled for a number of years on the Santa Clara (California) Swim Club. He served as captain of the intercollegiate swimming group at Indiana University, Bloomington (graduated 1972). At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City he aroused controversy by publicly predicting that he would seize six gold medals. In reality he received solely two, each in group relay races (4 × 100-metre and 4 × 200-metre freestyle). He did win two particular person medals, silver (100-metre butterfly) and bronze (100-metre freestyle).

At the 1972 Games in Munich, Spitz was good. He positioned first and set world data in all 4 particular person males’s occasions he entered: the 100-metre and 200-metre freestyle (51.2 sec and 1 min 52.8 sec) and the butterfly over the identical distances (54.3 sec and a pair of min 0.7 sec). He added three extra gold medals as a member of victorious U.S. males’s groups (within the 400-metre and 800-metre freestyle relays and the 400-metre medley relay), which additionally set world data. His report for many gold medals at a single Olympics stood till 2008, when damaged by American swimmer Michael Phelps. Spitz was among the many first group to be inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983. He briefly got here out of retirement in 1992 in an unsuccessful try and qualify for the Olympic group within the 50-metre butterfly race.