Over-Achievers

MF: You're talking about football, not so much baseball?

Jenner: Not so much baseball, but obviously it's there, and it's pretty dirty. But they really don't take it seriously, so that's kind of the big picture of this whole thing. I'm sorry for her. You asked, "should she get the punishment she got?" Well, she kind of gave her medals back before they even asked her. And she'll have to live with that for the rest of her life. She's been terribly punished, yes. I hope it doesn't go any further, you know, than where it is right now. It's over, it's done, she admitted it, move on.

MF: So is it safe to root for track and field again? Is the testing starting to have the effect of cleaning up the sport?

Bob Beamon: One comment, and that is, I don't really know much about it, particularly Marion Jones. I haven't had any run ins or anything with any athletes that were taking it. I would rather sit out on this one. I just don't have enough background to have a real intelligent conversation.

MF: So what kind of emotional impact has this had – watching the Olympics go through this?

Mark Spitz: Well, first of all, I think if I'm not correct, the first time they tested for drugs in the Olympics was 1968, and subsequently, they've been testing ever since. The whole idea is to hopefully try and stay ahead of the curve of what's being taken. But, I have some very interesting information inside of what was going on in 1988 when Ben Johnson got tagged for having taken a drug and tested positive and they took away his gold and gave it to Carl Lewis.

Subsequently, of course, that put a tremendous amount of pressure on the televising network of the sponsorships that said, "wait a second, time out, I thought that drug testing was done so that what was left was the athletes that obviously tested positive." I certainly wouldn't want to align my company and associate myself with this kind of controversy. Hence, the conversation with the television networks and the IOC was, "what are you testing for? And why weren't you testing for something that he previously might have been taking?" This is the paradox of what the problem is, and so when I was looking at articles about what was currently happening, the $64,000 question is, "why wasn't that picked up in 2000?"

MF: When she won the medals...

Spitz: Yeah, exactly.

Jenner: There's ways to mask it. Ways to get around it.

Spitz: I think the reality is this...

Jenner: Balco knew what they were doing.

Spitz: The IOC has a very interesting spin. They're the foremost at testing. They've been testing the longest, but now because of some issues, they're testing for performance-enhancing drugs. There's no doubt about it. But the asterisk to that is this: but they're all old school. The latest and greatest athletes that are competing right as we speak, this moment, they may be on something that's not being tested for because they knowingly know that they'll come clean in any kind of a drug test, whether it's at random or after immediately participating in a national event, or, in this case the Olympic games next year. The paradox of the problem that happened in 2000 was, because of an unfortunate set of circumstances, and the discovery of a company up in the Bay Area called Balco, there was a list of people that were purchasing products from that company, of which the list was long, and there were athletes that were potentially at that time, because they hadn't gone to the Olympics, going to be Olympians, and now all of a sudden, that list also depicted what they were taking, and then it became very apparent that there were items on that list, that if those athletes are taking this, and it must be then performance-enhancing, the IOC then had to then put that on the list.

As soon as they do that, the athletes need about six months knowingly to rid themselves of not being on that item, and therefore then they would test OK. Unfortunately, that happened under a four-month period of time of actually the Olympic trials. And so therefore, a lot of athletes that were on that list had very poor performances, and you can trace that down to exactly those people, who they are. And so those people either didn't make the Olympics or made the Olympics and didn't live up to their expectations and then some countries weren't following what was going on in the United States, their governing bodies didn't have that new list that was adapted immediately, even though it may have been sent out to them but then it didn't migrate to the coaching level and then to the athlete level, and then there were athletes immediately in the first week of competition...one particular guy that was from the host city than won the first gold medal. It was a weight lifter and then BINGO! They're stuck with this problem.

I mean, look at this. I asked Bruce this today. If we were competing today, and the fact that they have so much designer things out there, they really are one cut ahead. And, the fact is, you were always getting second, and the guy who's getting first has got those million dollar contracts. I mean, like, OK, what would you do?

MF: All right, what would you do?

Spitz: He answered it the way I'd have answered it. One, we'd be very scared.

Jenner: Can't get caught.

Spitz: Can't get caught.

Jenner: It's not worth it.

Spitz: Because now, it's showing, not only do you get caught...OK great, I made the $1 million, I spent it, and then I have to give my gold medal back. Oh no, excuse me, Marion Jones may actually be doing time.

Jenner: Well, it's more for lying.

Spitz: Who knows? There was a big thing in the LA Times about USC, and some home his parents were all of a sudden living in San Diego, from some...

Jenner: There's always...anyway...

MF: Well, aside from the drugs, how would you compare the athletes back in your era, just in terms of physicality? Are they just better trained, or more motivated? Or less?

Jenner: I don't think motivation is any different – nobody could have been more motivated than me. So motivation, they're right there. Yeah, I mean, any sport will progress, you know. Bob Beamon, the record that never could be broken. Took ‘em what, 30, 40 years? What was it?

Beamon: 23.

Jenner: 23 years, is that all? Oh shit, that's nothing then. 23 years later somebody finally does come by and finally breaks it. I don't think there's any physical barriers out there, physically we can do tremendous things. There's only mental barriers out there. Whatever the standard is for that time, that's what you train to. Once somebody breaks it, that's the standard, and that's what you have to train to.

Nobody could clear 18 foot on the vault, finally one guy gets over it, then the next week three guys get over it. Mental barriers. We can go a long way, sports-wise. We're held back by our head and what the standard is of that. Well today, the guy's that are out there training, they have to train and kind of live to that standard that's out there today, that world record. That's what it is. And eventually, they'll get broke. World records always get broken. And then we'll move on. And that'll be the next new standard. If it took me six years of my life, training 6-8 hours of the day every day, the next guy's going to go seven years, eight hours a day.

MF: Is there a point where the body wouldn't be able to take it?

Jenner: No. You sound like the guys in the 40s and 50s saying that the four-minute mile couldn't be broken. It's endless. It's what the standard is. It's endless. Look at the times Mark...what are your times for '72?

Spitz: The time's now, which when I did were world records, wouldn't even qualify as a standard for me to even enter the Olympic trials, except for one event, the 100 fly, which still, today, would still be in the top 8 times ever done, but that's just a weird situtation, and I don't know the reason.

I do know one thing: if you look in my sport, and I think this is actually in a lot of sports, track and field, or in diving, the weight training programs that were available and knowledgeable at that time in '72, we didn't have the equipment that you'd find in a local gym today, so it was basically free weights, as they say. And they didn't know the kinesiology of what muscle groups to really develop. Now they have it down to a science, where if you want to be a sprint freestyler, you need to develop this muscle, this muscle, and this muscle, and by the way, that happens to be that machine, #26 machine, and you spend four minutes there, seven minutes there, you take four minutes break, you do this and do that, and then have a milkshake. I mean, they've got it down to that.

And what happens is we're developing athletes, strength-wise, based on the evolution of equipment, especially in the last 10 years, as opposed to 30 years, so in 30 years, 35 years since I competed, four generations of athletes, basically, for all of us, that have come through our sport, and the one's in the last two generations have taken really the benefit of weight-training, of physicality, something other than just the bare running, sprinting and interval training that we used to do, or all of the stuff on the trampoline so they can jump higher and execute, and they have a little more time in the air, that's what I see being the biggest development in sport as to why times have gotten better.

I actually made my swimming comeback 15 years ago. They do the same thing in the pool, and I'm sure they do the same thing on the track, but it's what they bring to the track that they did previously, and I think that that enhancement has made sports improve immensely.

MF: So it comes down to the weight training and the cross-over training you do?

Spitz: the Cross-over, yeah. I think that's made a big difference.

Jenner: I totally agree with him. Training just gets better. It gets smarter. Technology gets into it. We can go on a computer, find out what our oxygen intake is, exactly what we're burning, what we're doing, and we're very technical in that. And also, nutrition gets better, not just the illegal kind, but legally, the nutrients we need for our body to go have gotten better and better and better and will continue to get better.

MF: Greg, what do you think about that. So much of your sport is technique. How have you seen the evolution of diving?

Greg Louganis: Obviously, dives are being done now that really kind of blow me away. Back 3 and a half pike, that kind of boggles my mind. That's not to say that in my day I couldn't have done it...

Jenner: You didn't have to.

Louganis: All sports evolve. Like Bruce started on, it is a mental game, because there is very few athletes that go out and really, truly go and think of their sport, their focus is performance, a lot of times we are brought up to think of a competition, so you're only going to be as good as the next guy. So you're limiting yourself. That was one thing that I found, and the guys in this room had to also learn to do, is to leave the behind. Do your own thing.

MF: Set your own standard.

Louganis: Yeah. If I was in a competition, chances are if the Chinese missed a dive, and I was looking at the Chinese as my competition, I'm going to miss my next dive. I had to make my own mark. So occasionally an athlete comes along that becomes his or her own marker, and that is really the performer that kind of sets himself apart, and that happens occasionally, and you'll see it with this group here whatever our motivation was.

MF: So you're saying guys are doing dives now that you never even thought of doing, but you didn't have to?

Louganis: But I didn't have to. I was doing dives that were boggling other people's minds. Verse 3 and a half, doing it in international competition, how risky is that? One kid died, another one doing a lead up killed himself, so it's a risk that you take, and also, like I said, to have the balls to leave the competition behind. It's a real mental game.

MF: Bob, so much of your sport happens in a very fine amount of time. Is there much physiological difference...has science invaded the long jump, do you see a big difference now?

Bob Beamon: I guess we can kind of reflect just a little bit. My jump was made in '68 and there's only been one person that has passed my jump. So the average jump today is still 27, 26 feet, so it's a little bit interesting, my event, that it hasn't gone to 30 feet or 31.5.

Spitz: You have no idea how far that jump is, because I was with him in Munich, and they have an Olympic museum, and it has the thing, a board, and you jump and run down there. Let me just say this. He got higher than six feet, which is higher than that door, and he jumped 50% longer than this room is long. I mean, it's just mind-boggling to think the distance that humanly is possible.

The funny thing is, the guy that broke his record, if he would have walked into this room, he's not as tall as Bob, he sort of has long legs but he looks relatively like a tennis player.

Beamon: He's not as pretty as I am.

MF: He said tennis player with a little disdain there.

Spitz: No, I mean he doesn't look like somebody who could jump that long, get that much speed, that power, you know.

Beamon: Let's take it another step. I think we're dealing with two different competitions. Bruce, Mark, Greg all know, you see all kinds of really interesting times and distances before the Olympic games, but during the Olympic games, it's kind of like a mind game, you have your...If you go in looking to break a world record or something, I think you come out with nothing.

You go in and you do what you've rehearsed so many years for. I strongly feel that...I asked Mike Powell how he felt that he'd been at several Olympics and has not received a gold medal. And he said that he'd rather have a gold medal than that world record.

I feel for him, because you feel you're capable of getting a gold medal, although, it's a mind game. The interesting thing is no one has come within a half a foot of my jump in the Olympic games, so I still hold the Olympic record, it'll be 40 years.

When you compare just competitions, world championships in diving and in swimming, and of course Bruce and I know about the world championships in track and field, we run for the money in the world championships. You don't see these guys in 1st place, 2nd place, or even 3rd place in the world championships.

I've seen some very disappointed people that have not made the Olympic team that have done some very incredible feats, prior to competing...

MF: So you're saying there's a difference between competing in the World Championships in your sport and the Olympics?

Louganis: Oh yeah. It shouldn't be.

Jenner: The games are the big pressure-cooker, there's no question about it. There's no way to get around it.

Louganis: But that's what the media does.

Jenner: Yeah, the media builds it up.

Louganis: It's all your fault! (laughs)

Spitz: I think the Olympics – I mean, we're dealing with amateur sports here, cool. It started off on the premise that the Olympics is, well...forget the word amateur. The Olympics has a cadre of about 250 roughly participated events, and in that there's the track and field events, there's the gymnastics, there's swimming, all the other sports. So, for us, the Super Bowl of what we do is not every year, it's once every four years. Now, when I competed I never had a world championships, but world championships, at least in swimming, diving, and water polo are once every four years, and I think track and field is every four years, so the fact that the world championships for track and field are once every four years puts a tremendous amount of pressure, however, the granddaddy of them all is the Olympic games, period, the end.

And as Bob said, you'd much rather win an Olympic medal, because that's the coveted thing you need to get to prove you're the greatest, when all the world is watching, at the most important event in our life in our sport. And sure, what draws the athletes to the Olympic Games most likely are the world record holders. But they're not necessarily the ones at that one given time that win the event. And they become the most dissipated and outcast, emotionally unstable and sort of disenfranchised group themselves and their abilities because they didn't win that medal, and I can prove that, because I was the world record holder in the 100 fly, and I got second in Mexico City, and I have a silver medal.

Now that should be something that I'm certainly very proud of, and I come away with two gold medals in relays and I should have been proud of that, and a silver and a bronze in the 100 freestyle, and yet I felt like I was a total failure. And I was the world record holder in most of those events. And so that was the driving force to why I kept going, so ultimately, to me, and I think in our sport, what we judge excellence by, each and every one of us in this room, was what we came away with at the Olympic Games. It wouldn't have mattered what his world record was in decathalons. He could have setthe world record 17 times going up to the Olympic Games. He didn't win the gold medal, OK, in Montreal, he'd be pumping gas somewhere. I mean, emotionally, right?

Jenner: I think I would own the gas station. I'd own a lot of gas stations.

Spitz: So ultimately to me, they say, "what's the most important thing to you in my athletic career?" They asked me this question in Sydney, Australia. Well, duh, winning all those medals. Somebody went to the extent of analyzing what I had done as an athlete, and said I didn't think winning the gold medals was as important – breaking the world record in every event in the Olympic Games was important, but he thought my best accomplishment was a statistic.

My sport doesn't have statistics like baseball. But the statistic the guy pointed out was pretty mind-boggling. I'm still trying to grapple with it. He analyzed, from the very first time – the very first world record I broke, I was 17 years old. And not counting pre-lims, and semi-finals, and finals, only the time that I swam to break a world record, I swam in all of the events I held a world record in, in national and international competition in, 72 times, and I set 35 world records. So statistically, almost 50 percent of the times I got in the water I broke a world record. But more importantly, the last 20 times I competed, other than the 3rd time of the 20, I had 19 world records out of the last 20 times I swam, all in the last 17 months of my career.

So, when I went to the Olympic Games, why would my competition think that they could beat me, when, in every instance, they had lost to me? So the art of winning, all of us, like Greg said, is you set your own goals, you set your own standards, and you're not concerned with somebody else so that in theory, what I saw happening around me, was that there was this big race to be first, and who was going to second? In my mind, I already knew what I wanted to get.

I'm 57 years old and there's not anybody in this room who is an Olympian, nor anybody who is an athlete that goes to the Olympics that rises to a low expectation of themselves. So not only are we expected to want to win, but the other 10,000 athletes that are in the opening ceremonies are in the same mode, have that same dream. But people who watch the Olympics from the outside think, oh, this is marvelous! But the reality is that I competed against the same guys, as each of us have, for 10 years. I mean, I could tell you – if Bruce was a competitor of mine – I could tell you what he was going to eat the day we were going to compete, I could tell you what shoe he was going to put on first, what shirt he was going to wear, where he was going to go sit and rest, how he was going to lay down, when he was going to get up, who was going to come talk to him, who he was going to reject, you know?

Every little move. That's all part of the psyche. So what you're looking at is the culmination of a bunch of psycho-somatic, hypochondriac people that did it just a hair better than anybody else but consistently, on a regular basis.

MF: And on that stage, some respond and some don't, because there's added pressure.

Spitz: I mean, that's the beauty of the Olympic Games. Here, I was swimming great, and then I lost. The pressure, and things can happen, and people, all of a sudden, will compete out of nowhere, and say, "You know something, this is the last time I'm ever going to compete in that event, that's the only event I have, so I'm going to throw all caution to the wind, because I'm tired of being second to Bruce or I'm tired of not being able to land that 3 and a half gainer pike," or, in my situation, "I'm going to have the race of my life and I'm going to try and beat so and so. It's a little easier to do when you're only in one event.

Funny thing is, he's (Louganis) in one event, but the multiple dives that cumulate to his ability, is no different than what I had to do in theory to win every event. And he (Jenner) was out there for two days, five events a day. If he may not have wanted to do well, let's say, in the shot put, and he may have had a margin to not do as well, but he wouldn't let his guard down because he knew that someone would all of a sudden read positive into that and maybe get him on the 1500 on the last race or something like that. Everything is a matter of watching that momentum.

Beamon: I think it's very interesting, the transition that we've all made since then would probably surprise most kids, most young guys, that here are perfect specimens, that have done something extraordinary, and suddenly we have something chronic, an illness, that could possibly have some serious effect on our life. I feel – I know that I've got a very interesting story in comparison to what we just talked about, how great we were and I think that people would be extremely surprised how we've mad a transition and how we're dealing with a serious illness.

I had a bout with a couple of things, high blood pressure, and diabetes. So I'm on the pill with diabetes right now, and I have type 2 diabtees. And I've been in the hospital three times in the last year with poisoning from medicines that I was taking. Nd it was pretty damn serious. First of all, to know, here I've had such a great life of being perfectly well and then suddenly, I'm faced with diabetes, hypertension that's deadly, when I was walking around with pressure 210/10, which is a stroke victim, and my diabetes was at a serious level where I had to take medication and then I had gout, I had arthritis, which Bruce suffers with, and I just thought I was getting ready to get out of here, because so many things happened in a year.

And so I've had to do three times in the hospital, and finally they found that my body had been dried up from all of these medicines that I was taking. And I never thought that I would go against what my doctor would say.

Here is the medication, and just go about your business because whatever I say is the word, so don't doubt what I'm saying. And I have been taking over 11 medications a day and my quality of life is just absolutely the pits. And I would take 9 pills in the morning, and they would be so powerful that I would have to sleep for a couple hours. And so I was taking more medicine than a senior citizen at 80 or 90 years old. I just didn't have anything going for me. I couldn't even do business. I lost an entire year of battling this. This is very dangerous.

Spitz: I thought you were sleeping in the morning because you were getting in at 4 in the morning! You were with me, I mean, come on.

Beamon: I wish it was that, but however, I did take a proactive role in getting out of the hospital and finding some ways of dealing with this medicine situation, and then we became members of Medco, and Medco has this specialist pharmacist that has helped me, along with their doctors, to help give me back my quality of life.

So I'm just really glad to just sit here and talk to you guys. It's difficult when you feel like you're losing a battle. I'm so happy that we've got a program, the Tour of Champions, and each of us have a very special chronic illness, that most people in general can relate to., but it's a real surprise these are the guys you've seen on the Wheaties box, you know?

Jenner: Seven years, I had to eat those flakes.

(laughter)

Hyson: So how did you acquire these illnesses? Obviously, everyone's an individual case...

Jenner: Mine was arthritis. Two knee surgeries, one in January 1969, football, and then another one in 1977, motocross. Fortunately, I never got hurt in my sport. But fooling around after.

Louganis: Mine was fooling around.

Jenner: Well, you hit your head on the board. I saw that one.

MF: Is it true that you were the first guy to take do a victory lap?

Jenner: Yes, I was the first guy. That's a true story. Nobody had – the only one in '68, when they had all of the protests, and the guys, John Carlos and everybody, George Foreman took a little flag into the boxing ring. Just a litte dinky flag. That was the only time anyone had ever done it before me, and then to be honest with me, it was not planned.

I get to the finish line, and this guy sort of jumped out of the stands and ran across the field. Security was after him, and he was running like hell, and he met me at the finish line. Literally. He crossed the track in the middle of the race.

MF: Imagine today, that guy.

Jenner: The guy actually got to me, and kept putting this thing in my face. And it was the flag. I literally had just stopped, slowing down. So I took his flag, I mean, the cops are over dragging him away, the least I can do is take his flag. So I get the flag in my hand, and to be honest with you, I don't even know what to do. Love my country, love doing this.

Spitz: Sports Illustrated pose.

Jenner: but to be honest with you, it seemed like a little too much. And so I didn't know what to do, and now I'm thinking, "OK, what do I do?" I said, well, I'll take this thing, hold it up once and then I'll put it down. Then I'll take it over to my bag, and put it in my bag, and do the actual victory lap you get without the flag. It's too much. It's just too much. You know, it's 1976, our country's bicentennial year. Flags were everywhere. Our country was 200 years old. This was three weeks after the greatest birthday celebration this country ever had.

So anyway, I take the thing and put it up in the air. Place goes crazy. And I have a camera right in front of me, literally, a film camera from the Canadian Film Board, that was the official documentary film of the Games, so I said all right, went a little farther, and one more time I kind of threw it up into the air. And then that was it. I never put it up again. I slowly walked over to my bag, rolled it up, gentle and nicely, and put it in my bag like I'm taking it with me.

As soon as I do that, I hear this, "boooo" come out of the whole stadium. I turn around and look, and there was a second guy, coming across the infield with another flag. They tackled him, just as they tackled him, and he's like 30 yards away from me, and he's on the ground, cops are on him, with this flag, and he's holding the flag out like this, pointing at me, and I'm like, damn, OK.

I go over there, get his flag, bring it back, and then I took that flag and wrapped it up, so I never actually took the victory lap with the flag, I just did it right at the end, and then Wheaties took that for the next seven years and crammed it down your throat, like I'd gone across the United States with the flag.

MF: That made you rich!

Jenner: I know, I like these guys. Now it's like you go across the finish line and your PR guy's there with the flag. It lost kind of its spontaneity.

From my standpoint with Medco, I've had a knee problem throughout the years. I've been very fortunate – for years, I've had to take pain medications. With Osteo-arthritis, especially in this case, with your knee, a lot of your readers have problems with their knees, they kind of beat them up over the years. You have to kind of give up things along the way. You have to give up tennis because now it gets too tough on your knees, and you're not running anymore, you're running on easy surfaces, and biking, then biking for years. Anything to try and save my knee. Until eventually, it got to the point to where it hurt playing golf. Now you gotta do something!

I was lucky, I found a product, called Uflexa(sp?) which is for osteoarthritis, but it's an injectable. But in my case, it's helped me get back to my biking. But in my case, I had a lot of kids, and you really need a specialist pharmacist and a company like Medco to be able to handle all the needs that I have. I have one daughter who's allergic to sulfur, her brain swells. She spent three days in the hospital because she took medication for this. So we have to watch that it never gets into her system. Stuff like that. And another reason I keep Medco, I don't have to go to the pharmacist, because the people in line, the Enquirer's around the corner, "what's he getting?" Much more private, and they do a wonderful job, a great company.

People don't realize how important this issue is, because so many people are affected by this, especially the chronic problems, people who have to take medicine all the time. Stats are more people die from taking the wrong medicines than die in car accidents. Just like you have a specialist doctor, you need a specialist pharmacist, and that's basically what MedCo is.

Spitz: I have three doctors for an example, I have a cardiologist because of my high cholesterol, and I take Lipitor on a regular basis. Even though I have on my chart all my medications at the cardiologist, and it's the same at the urologist and the pulmonologist, the reality is each one of those doctor's selfishly has tunnel vision, based on what they're describing, and they're not really looking at the other pages where the medication is listed, that you filled out in the waiting room, can't even spell the names of the drugs in the first place, to begin with.

But that doesn't happen with Medco, especially if you're receiving your medication from them. Sometimes there can be a deadly effect if you're not taking the right medications. I think that's important, I think that's a real issue, and that's why my association is something I cherish.

Jenner: Isn't it a shame guys, 20-30 years ago, we'd be talking about the ladies in our life.

Louganis: Excuse me! Discrimination!

Jenner: and today we're talking about this? What are we talking about now – what's your medicine?