Considered to be one of the greatest swimmers of all time, Mark Spitz is a former American swimmer who represented the United States in the 1968 and 1972 Summer Olympics in Mexico City and Munich respectively. Between the two Olympic Games in which he participated, Spitz won 9 gold medals, one silver medal and one bronze medal. He has also set 33 world records during his career and was voted to be the Best Swimmer in the world in the years 1969, 71 and 72.

Having already set 10 world records by then, Spitz rashly predicted that he will be walking away with 6 gold medals by the end of the 1968 Summer Olympics. However, he couldn’t live up to his promise and ended up with 2 gold medals; both of them coming in team events. Moreover, he lost to Doug Russell, whom he had beaten ten times before without losing even once, in the 100 meters butterfly. This loss also resulted in Spitz being kept out of the United States’ 4X100 meter medley relay team.

Following the poor performance in the 1968 Summer Olympics, Spitz went back to college and trained with his coach. He trained for 4 years and won numerous events in the process. He returned to participate in the Olympics in 1972 with an aim to live up to the promise he made 4 years ago. And oddly enough, he not only won those six gold medals, but also went on to win the seventh one. Experts maintain that he would have won eight had the “Munich Massacre” not paid put to his Olympic campaign. He also managed to set world records in each and every one of those events. His record of seven gold medals in a single Olympics survived untouched for 36 years before it was surpassed by Michael Phelps of the United States in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

After the conclusion of the 1972 Munich Olympics, Spitz retired from professional swimming when he was aged 22. With this, he brought the curtains down on one of the most glorious careers in sporting history.