To mark 100 days from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Nine.com.au asked you what your favourite Olympic memories were in a survey. The response was overwhelming! We chose 50 of them to re-live, one a day, before new memories are made in Paris. Scroll on for today’s memory.
The fashion was glorious and the feat astounding.
Mark Spitz, wearing his starry, striped Speedos and sporting his thick, black moustache, won seven gold medals and broke seven world records at the Munich 1972 Olympics.
Across the course of eight days, the California-born superstar won the 100m and 200m butterfly, won the 100m and 200m freestyle, and was part of victorious relay teams in the 4x100m freestyle, 4x200m freestyle and 4x100m medley.
Watch the video at the top of the page to see Mark Spitz in action at the Munich 1972 Olympics, where he won seven gold medals and broke seven world records!
He clocked 54.27 seconds in the 100m butterfly, 2:00.70 in the 200m butterfly, 51.22 in the 100m freestyle and 1:52.78 in the 200m freestyle.
In the relays, he was a member of teams that recorded 3:26.42 in the 4x100m freestyle, 7:35.78 in the 4x200m freestyle and 3:48.16 in the 4x100m medley.
Every event he contested resulted in a gold medal and a world record.
Never before had an athlete won seven Olympic gold medals at a single Games. Thirty-six years later, the feat was topped by Michael Phelps at the Beijing 2008 Games, when the American megastar won eight gold medals and shattered seven world records.
Spitz’s incredible Munich 1972 campaign followed a backfired prediction ahead of the Mexico City Games four years earlier. Although he won two relay gold medals as well as individual silver and bronze in Mexico, he had predicted he would win six gold medals.
At the age of 22, Spitz retired from elite swimming after the Munich Games.