In my opinion, when measuring the most dominate Olympic
athlete of all time, we must consider the wiener.
If you are dutifully keeping up with your Rio Olympics
YouTube fail videos, you might immediately assume that I’m referring to Japanese
pole vaulter Hiroki Ogita, and his unfortunate, yet anatomically impressive disqualification
at the hands of his man parts.
I am not.
And you gymnastics fans might be thinking that I’m referring
to a three-time Olympic medalist in the men’s trampoline event - high-flying Chinese silver
medalist, Dong Dong. Again, you would be wrong.
South African rugby phenom Werner Kok? American synchronized
diver Steele Johnson?
What’s the matter with you people? Get your minds out of the
sewage-infested gutters of Rio. I’m obviously talking about hot dogs. Now get
your minds into the sewage-infested pools of Rio and think swimming, people! Swimming
and hot dogs. What do they have to do with each other, you ask? Well, a lot, as
a matter of fact, when discussing total swimming dominance.
Michael Phelps has once again turned in one of the most
amazing sports careers of all time. He left the sport of swimming the first
time in 2012, at the end of the London Olympic Games, but decided on a comeback
and added six more medals to his neck in Rio this year. He retires (we think) with
twenty-eight Olympic medals, a staggering twenty-three of them gold.
Let’s put that into perspective with some handy bullet
points:
- No other single Olympian in history even has double digits
in gold. Not even Dong Dong.
- Phelps has two more total career Olympic medals than Egypt,
and the country of Ireland is only beating him by one in the overall medal
count. Don't even get me started on Kyrgyzstan. He beat them before he could legally buy beer.
- Brazil, this year’s host country, has the same amount of career
gold medals as Michael Phelps now has at home, assuming Phelps gets out of the
crime-infested host country with all of his medals.
At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Phelps made history by
winning eight gold medals in eight straight events. He broke the long-standing
record of fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz, who went seven golds for seven
events in Munich in 1972. When Phelps broke Spitz’ medal record, the world crowned
him as the new “Greatest Olympian,” and there was very little public debate
about it. Now, as Phelps finishes up with his astonishing career medal count,
crushing former Soviet female gymnast Larisa Last-name-ina for all-time
individual medals won, and ending up with close to three times as many career
medals as Spitz, he will be written into the history books as the greatest, bar
none.
I am here today to dispute that. I am here today to tell you
that Spitz was better, and my argument lies with the wiener.
My case for Spitz being a more dominant swimmer doesn’t even
take into account that he won most of his 1972 Olympic races by body lengths,
or that he set new world record times in all seven swims. I’m not even focusing
on the fact that he swam without goggles, that he swam without a cap, or that
he swam with an afro, all of his rather prodigious underarm hair, and a Tom
Selleck mustache. My argument even ignores his 1970’s red, white, and blue
Speedo, which is hard to ignore.
My argument has to do with eating. A lot of fuss is always
made during the Olympic coverage about how much Michael Phelps and the other
swimmers eat every day. While it is certainly a lot, in the world of
competitive swimming, it’s pretty standard. World-class swimmers do two things
- swim and eat. I was by no stretch of the imagination a world-class swimmer,
or even a county- or city-class swimmer, but when I was swimming in high
school, I would come home from practice and eat the entire right side of the
fridge. That’s just par for the course, swimming-wise.
The amount of food that Spitz and Phelps put away during
their swimming days is not where my argument lies. My case for Spitz’ athletic
superiority comes from the amount of food he could put away during a
race.
When I was in high school, our swim coach told us a story
about Mark Spitz. Back when Spitz was in high school in Santa Clara, California,
Coach Pete had seen him race at a nationals meet. Spitz already held national
high school records in every stroke, and he was heavily favored in every one of
his races, but when the swimmers took the blocks for one of his events, he was
absent.
His name was called over the loudspeaker, and everyone at
the pool and in the grandstands began looking around for him. When the race
officials called his name again, telling him to report to his lane to start the
race, he was seen jogging toward the starting blocks from the snack bar. He had
three hot dogs in one hand, and he was eating another while he was running
toward the pool.
He reached his starting block at one of the middle lanes of
the pool, chewing the last of the hot dog he had been eating while he ran. He
handed two of the three remaining dogs to the timer behind his block, asking
the man to please save them for him. He then joined his opponents, stepping up
onto his starting block, still holding a hot dog.
Now, let’s be clear for a minute. We’re talking about an
Oscar Mayer wiener, in a bun, with the condiments of Spitz’ choice. In his
hand. On the starting blocks. Of a nationals race. He had just Joey Chestnut’ed
one of them while running. He was now standing over the end of his lane holding
another.
As the crowd looked on in gastro-intestinal awe, Mark Spitz
proceeded to stuff the entire hot dog into his mouth, reach down to touch the
block at the “take your marks” command, and dive into the pool with seven other
swimmers, starting his race while chewing and swallowing a whole hot dog on lap
number one.
He beat the nearest finisher by almost two body lengths.
Michael Phelps is undoubtedly awesome, but all he ever did
was swim. What about the wiener? It probably never even occurred to him to
combine competitive eating with competitive swimming. Mark Spitz was a trailblazing,
groundbreaking, lightning-fast, “I can eat a hot dog during this race and still
whip your ass” kind of an athlete. Wait thirty minutes after eating before
getting in the pool? No thanks. I’ll eat while I’m swimming.
Phelps says he did everything he set out to do, and the
world seems to be in agreement on his status as the Greatest Olympian.
That may be true, but when measured against the wiener
factor, Spitz still has my vote.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen
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