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Still the gold standard

Men's Fitness, Feb, 2008

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With the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing just months away, we sat down with four iconic Olympians to address some of the biggest issues surrounding the upcoming Games. Our panel: 1976 decathlon gold medalist Bruce Jenner; Greg Louganis, four-time gold medalist in '84 and '88 for diving; swimmer Mark Spitz, the first athlete to win seven golds at a single Olympics (72); and '68 long-jump gold medalist Bob Beamon. In New York to raise awareness about MedCo, a company offering specialized pharmacists to help patients balance multiple meds, these legends let loose on everything from steroids to the evolution of training.

FITNESS: THEN AND NOW

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MF: Looking back, what set you guys apart from your competition--pure talent or something else? Are today's athletes wired the same way?

Spitz: I competed against the same guys, as each of us did, for 10 years. I could tell you--if Bruce was a competitor of mine--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 sit and rest, how he was going to lay down, and when he was going to get up.

Jenner: I don't think the motivation is any different. Nobody could have been more motivated than me. [Everyone laughs.] Any sport will progress, you know. Look at Bob Beamon's record, "the record that could never be broken." Took 'em what, 30, 40 years?

Beamon: 23.

Jenner: 23 years, is that all? Oh shit, that's nothing then. I don't think there are any physical barriers out there. Physically, today's athletes can do tremendous things. There are only mental barriers.

Spitz: Some of my times, which used to be world records, wouldn't even qualify me to enter the Olympic trials now. We didn't have the equipment that you'd find in a local gym today, and we didn't know the kinesiology as well. Now [training] is down to a science. 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 or the pool now that makes a difference.

Jenner: I totally agree with him. Training just gets better. It gets smarter. Technology gets put to use. We can go on a computer, find out what our oxygen intake is, exactly what we're burning. We're very technical in that. And also, the nutrients we supply to our bodies have gotten better and better and better, and will continue to get better.

"SET YOUR OWN STANDARD."

MF: So much of sport is technique. How have you seen your sport improve over the years?

Louganis: All sports evolve. Obviously, dives are being done now that really kind of blow me away. That's not to say that in my day I couldn't have done it....

Jenner: You didn't have to.

Beamon: My jump was made in '68, and there's only been one person that has passed it today.

Spitz: The funny thing is, if the guy that broke Bob's record walked in here, you'd see he looks like a tennis player. He wouldn't look like somebody who could jump that long, get that much speed, that much power, you know?

Beamon: No one has come within half a foot of my jump in the Olympic games, so I still hold the Olympic record. It'll be 40 years. I think if you go [into the Olympics] looking to break a world record, you come out with nothing. I've seen some very disappointed people that haven't made the Olympic team that have done some very incredible things. You just go in, and you do what you've rehearsed so many years for. It's a mind game.

Louganis: Like Bruce said earlier, it is a mental game. A lot of times we are brought up to think too much about the competition, so you're only going to be as good as the next guy. 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 competition behind. If you want to succeed, do your own thing. Set your own standard.

STEROIDS

MF: One of the biggest news stories in '07 was Marion Jones' admission that the five-time Olympic gold medalist in 2000 used performance-enhancing drugs. Your thoughts? [Note: A few weeks after our chat, Barry Bonds was indicted on federal charges that he lied to a grand jury about taking steroids.]

Beamon: I don't really know much about Marion Jones, but I haven't had any run-ins with any athletes that were taking anything.

Spitz: When I was looking at the articles about what was happening, the $64,000 question to me was, "Why wasn't that picked up in 2000?"

Jenner: The whole thing is sad, there's no question. Marion Jones is not a bad person. You get to that level, you're going to push the envelope as far as you can push it, and obviously, she went over the line. She's going to have to pay for that. She's been terribly punished, but I hope it doesn't go any further than where it is right now. It's over, it's done, she admitted it, move on. About 14,000 athletes go to the Olympic games, two get caught, and the entire story is about the two that get caught. To be honest, if the NFL, the NBA, and the MLB had to live under the same standards that we live under, they couldn't do it. If you've got marijuana in your system, you're gone. I mean, the NBA? Come on. And the NFL? They're a unionized sport. The unions don't want it. The owners could care less if they're on something. They want to win football games. At that level in that sport, you almost have to take a lot of stuff just to survive, you know?

Still the gold standard

Men's Fitness, Feb, 2008

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