No Limits (10 page)

Mark went to college at Indiana. In those days, there was no such thing as turning professional. There were no professionals at the Olympics then, and there had not been ever since the Games
were revived in 1896, in Athens. In the ancient Games, way back when, at Olympia, winners got only an olive wreath; when the modern Olympics got started, it was with that ideal in mind. The rules of eligibility originally were driven by the notions of European aristocracy, in particular the idea that it would be cheap and undignified to play for pay. That's why Jim Thorpe was stripped of the medals he won in the pentathlon and the decathlon at the Olympics in 1912 in Stockholm; the year after the Games, he acknowledged he had earned $25 per week playing minor-league baseball in North Carolina in 1909 and 1910. By the strictest definition of the rules, he had been a professional athlete and therefore ineligible to compete at the Olympics.

The president of the IOC from 1952 through those Munich Olympics in 1972, Avery Brundage, an American, made the amateur code his official passion. It made no difference to Brundage that athletes in, say, the Soviet Union could get a commission in the army. If Spitz wanted to swim in Munich, to avenge his performance in 1968, he had to do so as an amateur. He could go to college, accept a scholarship, but that was it.

This story was all part of the lore of swimming.

And, as well, what happened in 1972.

First Mark won the 200 fly, beating, among others, Gary Hall, Sr. He anchored the winning 400 free relay. He won the 200 free, after which, waving to fans while holding a pair of tennis shoes, he got dragged before the IOC, and Brundage. Mark was accused by some of endorsing a product, which would have made him a professional. The IOC admonished Mark but did not ban him, the whole thing is a study in hypocrisy; on the Olympic grounds, the IOC was promoting the sale of special Games postcards bearing the images of Mark and other swim standouts.

He went back to the pool and got two more golds, in the 100 fly and 800 relay. He won the 100 free. The seventh gold came as he swam the butterfly leg of the medley relay.

Mark was not only the first to win seven golds.

He was the first to win six.

And then his career was over.

If he had been allowed to make money, it clearly would have been in his—not to mention, those hypothetical sponsors—interests to keep swimming. He could have gone to the 1976 Games in Montreal. Probably not swim seven events again. But he would have been only twenty-six, very much in his prime.

But he had no choice. He couldn't ponder the what-if, if I stayed in, how many more medals could I have won?

A few days after winning the seventh medal, Mark posed for a photo in his Speedo stars-and-stripes suit. It sold millions. That poster is probably one of those things that they'll find in one of those time capsules from the 1970s that got buried somewhere. Along with that one of Farrah Fawcett four years later.

Change to the Olympic eligibility code was very slow in coming. It didn't really happen until after 1981, when Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain took over the IOC. It wasn't until 1985, the year I was born, that the international swimming federation—it's called FINA, after its French name,
Fédération Internationale de Natation
—began to allow swimmers to accept training stipends from their national federations. After the 1988 Seoul Olympics, under the direction of Samaranch, the IOC voted to accept professional athletes.

The IOC has since left eligibility rules up to the various international sports federations. Boxing chose to stick with amateurs. Soccer limits each team at the Olympics to three players over age twenty-three. The rest of the sports were only too glad to welcome professionals. Thus, for instance, the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona provided a worldwide stage for the Dream Team, the U.S. men's basketball all-star team that romped to the gold medal with Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and the rest.

American swimmers who made the 1992 Olympic team were eligible to get a $1,500 monthly check from USA Swimming, plus
a bonus of $1,250. The contrast with the Dream Teamers could not have been more dramatic.

That's why some swimmers set out to test the waters, so to speak.

I was very fortunate to be able to see an example of this firsthand. At North Baltimore, Anita Nall, who after winning those three medals in Barcelona was without question a star of our club, became the youngest American female swimmer to turn pro. But she did so without an agent. She maybe made $250,000 as a pro, mostly making speeches and working at swim clinics, and that was it.

Other swimmers did the college thing. Malchow went to Michigan. Jenny Thompson went to Stanford and starred at four Olympics, starting in 1992.

Bob, my mom, and I had started talking after Sydney about me turning pro; the world records in the 200 fly intensified the conversations; the records obviously increased my bargaining power. We all talked, too, about how important it would be to find not just an agent but the right agent, not just someone who would help find sponsors and negotiate contracts. The right agent would also be innovative and creative.

As we were having these discussions, I had not even begun my junior year of high school. I knew that if I turned pro I would be giving up the chance to compete for conference or NCAA championships, and might well not have the chance to experience the fraternity of college swimming. But what I was trying to do was bigger than conference or NCAA championships. I had already set a world record. I had already been to the Olympics. I had taken a hard look at my goals and realized I wanted more than college. Going pro would help me focus on meeting those goals.

I was on track to get my high school diploma in 2003. The Athens Olympics were in 2004. What was I going to do for that
year? If I were a professional swimmer, the answer to that would be easy.

Yes, my high school classmates would be into and through their first year of college. Going pro would mean putting any formal education on the back burner. Then again, traveling the world because of swimming might offer me the equivalent of graduate-level courses in business, marketing, and international relations.

I have always done my swimming in a Speedo suit.

That first deal with Speedo, signed in 2001, went through 2005. It included a clause that would pay for my college education if my swimming career didn't work out.

Obviously, I had promise, but was still very much a work in progress. About a month after the news broke that I had turned pro, I traveled to the U.S. Open short-course meet in Long Island. Walking onto the deck to swim the 200 back, I realized I had forgotten my cap and goggles. I looked at my mom. She shrugged her shoulders. I shrugged mine. I looked at Bob. Same thing.

I had to learn to change from being a kid to a professional. They say you learn more from your mistakes than anything.

•   •   •

If it seemed obvious, it was no less imperative to find an agent with Olympic experience. But whom?

The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics took place in February 2002. Bob was watching the
Today
show one morning when Matt Lauer introduced an agent named Peter Carlisle. Two of his snowboarding clients, Ross Powers and Kelly Clark, had won the halfpipe events in Salt Lake; Peter was on the show explaining strategies to reach young people interested in action sports, music, computer games. Bob put down his coffee cup.

This, he thought, is the guy.

It took two months to hold a meeting, as Peter was just too busy looking after his stars from those Winter Games. He was
director of Olympic sports for Octagon, an agency based outside Washington, D.C., that had acquired his independent agency the year before. His home base was in Maine, where he grew up.

“So,” Peter said to me at that first meeting, “what do you want for your future, Michael? What are your goals?”

I said the first thing that came to mind: “I want to change the sport of swimming.”

In Australia, swimmers were on billboards, in commercials. Kids grow up there wanting to be swimmers the way they grow up in the United States wanting to play quarterback. In Australia, swimming was often the lead topic on the nightly news—not just the sports segment, the entire news show. How often was swimming even shown on a sports highlight show in the United States?

I was still sixteen years old. I wasn't trying to be overbearing. I truly did not think I was that full of myself. I had been asked a question and was trying to answer it honestly.

“I want to change the sport of swimming, I want people to talk about it, think about it, and look forward to seeing it. I want them to want to jump in and do it. That's my goal.”

I signed up with Peter that summer. He negotiated a deal with Visa that put me in line to make me one of the athletes it would feature in the run-up to the 2004 Olympics. And then he waited.

Peter has a guilty pleasure: reality television. He was fascinated by the dynamics of
Survivor
. What does the winner of
Survivor
get?

A $1 million check.

The first meet of mine that Peter saw in person came in the summer of 2002, the summer nationals in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The meet, the U.S. qualifier for the 2003 Worlds in Barcelona, ended with me being the first man since Spitz to hold four American records. The next year, in Barcelona, I became the first swimmer to lower world records in different events on the same day.

While in Barcelona, the time had come. Peter asked to meet with Speedo's executives. He said, we need to renegotiate the contract, for all the right reasons.

What, they asked, do you want?

He said, a million bucks. If, in Athens, Michael matches Spitz's seven golds, you pay him a million bucks.

There were other details—a base salary, smaller bonuses for some lesser number of medals in Athens, and so on—but the million was the nut of the deal. Think, Peter told the company's executives, of the publicity this would bring not just Michael, but Speedo.

Incentive deals are common in pro football and baseball. You make the Pro Bowl, you get an extra $100,000. You make baseball's All-Star team, here's $50,000. Or whatever. This simply extended an idea that had become commonplace in other sports to swimming.

Carmelo Anthony went to high school a mile away from where I did. He spent one year in college, leading Syracuse to an NCAA championship. Then he was drafted by the Denver Nuggets. In July 2003, the Nuggets signed him to a four-year, $15.1 million contract. Five days later, I dove into the water for my first heat in the 200 fly at the Worlds in Barcelona. If I was in swimming solely to make money, I was in the wrong sport.

And this: Carmelo was going to be on television dozens of times that fall. Swimming wasn't going to be seen live on any American television network during all of 2003.

My Speedo deal, with the $1 million bonus, was announced in November 2003 and, from then on, I had to navigate a balance.

It wasn't until the Fort Lauderdale meet the year before that Bob had even allowed himself to think I might have the capability to reach for seven medals.

In fact, it had been such a nonstarter that, asked about it early in the meet by a reporter from the Colorado Springs newspaper—the U.S. Olympic Committee is based there, and so what's written
by the local paper, the
Gazette,
gets noticed by Olympic insiders everywhere—Bob almost snorted. “You can compare Michael to Mark Spitz in that he swims a lot of different events in different strokes at a high level,” he said. “Now can he win seven events, seven gold medals? That's very difficult to do in this day and age.

“…I can't imagine right now we'd try an event program that would be that ambitious.”

Still, Bob said, “I'm not going to rule it out.”

I had told the same reporter it might be fun to aim for. “It's harder now than it was back then. If you can do it, wow!”

Bob was having no more
wow
talk. As soon as the thought of seven came up, he shoved it right back down. The way to think about seven medals wasn't to talk about it. It was to train.

The bonus, predictably, generated enormous publicity. That was good. But complex.

It was essential never to be disrespectful of any of my teammates or rivals. Not that I ever would. I simply had to be aware of the dynamic. Each of them had goals, too.

It was key to be respectful in everything I said and did about Mark. That was easy. What he did was amazing. It deserves enormous respect. He has, always has had, mine.

It was also critical to separate myself from Mark. I wasn't trying to be him. I was me. And what I wanted, what I was after, was to do something no one else had done. That's what I set my mind to, and that's what I was going for.

It's not a lie that I wanted to beat the record. It's not a secret. I just wasn't going to come out and say it. Why would I? The only person who could help me accomplish my goals was Bob. No offense to anyone in the media, but is a reporter going to help me swim faster? A reporter going to help me win any medal of any kind? That's why I kept everything to myself. It wasn't necessary to share my goals with anyone but Bob. So I didn't do it.

If I was asked, can you beat Spitz? I might say, you never know what can happen. I would then go on to say, the only per
son I can worry about is myself. If I can prepare the best I can, that's all I can ask. If I go in and still get beat with my best time, that's all I can ask for. I can't say yes or no.

To answer, well, of course I want to beat him and I think I can, would be impolite and immodest. It would be trash-talking. Not my way.

My goals were my goals, and they were to win as many as I could win. If everything broke right, I could win a number that, as it turns out, rhymes with the word “fate.” Bob and I planned it. He said: You have the ability to swim these events at a high level. Show the world what you can do. Never mind the world. Show yourself.