"I never got invited. You don't go to the Olympics just to say, I am going to go. Especially because of who I am," Spitz told AFP in Hong Kong.
"I am going to sit there and watch Michael Phelps break my record anonymously? That's almost demeaning to me. It is not almost—it is."
Oh, so sorry, Mr. King of the World Spitz! Especially because of who you are! What else is bugging you?
Now a stockbroker and motivational speaker, Spitz also thinks he could have won eight golds himself in Munich if only he had had the chance.
"I won seven events. If they had the 50m freestyle back then, which they do now, I probably would have won that too," he said.Spitz, whose brief stint in show business in the 1970s never quite matched his success in the pool, said he attended the Athens Olympics four years ago—when Phelps also tried to break the record.
"They did not once put my face on television," he recalled. "But as soon as the swimming was over, and Michael Phelps didn't break my record, every time I went to beach volley, they put my face on the volleyballs."
Wait, what? They put his face on volleyballs? WTF is up with that?
Anyway, yeah, you're a legend (in swimming, anyway, which, by the way, Mark Spitz, isn't exactly like being in the baseball Hall of Fame or being a member of Led Zeppelin or something), but quit acting like such a petulant jerk and maybe someone will invite you to something next time. I bet you're a hell of a motivational speaker. "They didn't bring me a water pitcher up here to the podium! I'm a legend! Where's my water pitcher?"
In a related story, I'm not into the Olympics at all.
This was one of your best blogs, yet. Isn't if funny how everyone who's done anything is a diva these days? If only Spitty could have a little more Hank Aaron-esque dignity, he could have shown grace AND made a statement by not being there.
ReplyDelete