Mark Spitz
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"Mark Andrew Spitz" is an American former competition swimming (sport)/swimmer, nine-time Olympic champion, and former world record-holder in multiple events. He won Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics/seven gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, an achievement only surpassed by Michael Phelps who won eight golds at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Spitz set new world records in all seven events in which he competed in 1972, a record that still stands. Since the year 1900, no other swimmer has ever gained so great a percentage of all the medals awarded for Olympic events held in a single Games.

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Life is true to form; records are meant to be broken.

I realized I had to step up to the responsibilities of my dream.

I'm trying to do the best I can. I'm not concerned with tomorrow, but with what goes on today.

It really changed how we do things in sports. Certainly, nothing happened to preplan or expect what was going to happen that day, as opposed to today, when extreme logistics go into planning.

Their destiny and where they want to be in life is not going to be a matter of chance ... it's really the choices they make, and they have to be committed to those choices.

The memories of the Munich games for me are of triumph and tragedy.

He gave me an opportunity to swim against the best swimmer of his day in the lane next to me, ... Don Schollander. He said, 'Keep up with him,' which I did. Then he taught me how to beat him, which I did. He was a great teacher. He knew what he was doing, and he instilled a tremendous amount of confidence in those around him.

If you fail to prepare, you're prepared to fail.

The officials I was with, I don't know if they were unaware, but they didn't say anything to me. The whole thing turned into what did I see and what did I know.