Mark Spitz, the former greatest Olympian, relieved

On the third day of his new life, Mark Spitz said that no matter what people might think, he's relieved.

Until last weekend, he was the athlete who had turned in the single greatest Olympic performance in history. All that changed on Sunday in Beijing, when Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal, surpassing Mr. Spitz's seven-medal haul in 1972.

Mr. Phelps's achievement -- combined with his bankable, boy-next-door personality -- gives him a shot at becoming the kind of global megastar that the more sardonic Mr. Spitz never was destined to become, despite occasional TV appearances with Sonny and Cher and Johnny Carson.

Just days into his existence as the "second greatest" Olympian, Mr. Spitz is still figuring out exactly what the downgrade means to him. Trying to describe his new identity, he gazes up at the ceiling and grows pensive. He has lost something, something he still had after Athens in 2004, when he watched Mr. Phelps win six gold medals, one short of his record.

Mr. Spitz's undisputed stature as one the greatest Jewish athletes of all time -- he routinely makes that list, alongside baseball legends Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg -- doesn't have quite the same cachet to him. "My mother and my mother-in-law and my wife will appreciate that," he says wryly, but it's not what got him into the pool to begin with.

Regarding Mr. Phelps, "What I'm thinking now is, he's got the burden of inspiring the youth as they go forward," Mr. Spitz said Tuesday. "That is a relief."

Mr. Spitz was still making the quasicelebrity rounds this week. On TV, on the Web, on the radio -- anywhere people would listen, really -- he compared his own Olympic accomplishments with those of Mr. Phelps. During each appearance, he deftly managed to slip in a plug for the Hyatt hotel chain, his sponsor. (Mr. Phelps has his own sponsorship deal with rival Hilton.)

It's the latest incarnation of a job that over the years has paid most of Mr. Spitz's bills, which is to say, being Mark Spitz. There were a couple of real-estate ventures in Hawaii and a few other business opportunities, but Mr. Spitz estimates he has spent 80 percent of his working life selling his brand of Olympic excellence.

While he hopes the requests for his time and his views will continue, Mr. Spitz says he is accepting the realization that, "It's Michael's time now."

Mr. Spitz views himself as a pioneer, and in many ways he wrote the modern playbook for turning Olympic gold into commercial riches. Olympians before him occasionally traded on their glory: Johnny Weissmuller became Tarzan. Decathlete Bob Mathias made the Wheaties box. But few permeated the popular culture the way Mr. Spitz attempted to -- even if his enigmatic personality prevented him from executing his plan to its fullest potential.

Outspoken and prone to sarcasm, Mr. Spitz came of age in an era before top athletes did media training as well as push-ups. In 1972, when asked his feelings about being Jewish and competing in Germany 30 years after the Holocaust, Mr. Spitz was widely quoted as saying that he didn't mind, even if a shade nearby was "probably made out of one of my aunts" -- a dark reference to the Germans' persecution of the Jews under Hitler.

During those Games, he also famously tried to psyche out a Russian coach by telling him his iconic mustache allowed him to swim faster because it deflected water from his nose and improved his buoyancy.

With his newfound fame, Mr. Spitz abandoned plans to become a dentist. Hollywood beckoned in classic 1970s fashion, and he appeared on "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour," had a stint as a paramedic on "Emergency" and did sports broadcasting for ABC.

He made $1 million, bought a yacht, and when his show-business career failed to flourish, he entered the less glitzy, and less lucrative, corporate-appearance circuit and started to invest in real estate.

Now 58, he is nearly unrecognizable from the lean, brash swimmer with the flowing brown hair and the bushy mustache who became an icon after Munich. The piercing eyes are still there, but his body is now more squat, in the fashion of a retired catcher.

Mr. Spitz says he swims two miles in the pool, three days a week. But he describes the motion as more "melodic" than taxing. On a street in midtown Manhattan, he is as anonymous as any corporate lawyer.

Despite his thorny reputation, Mr. Spitz was gracious on NBC's Olympic broadcast Friday night, calling Mr. Phelps's performance "epic" and stating that he was proud to pass his Olympic crown to him.

People could "finally see who I really am," Mr. Spitz said of the TV appearance.

For most of the past 36 years, his working life has followed the Olympic cycle. Corporations and sponsors dial his number as the Games approach, and sign him up for motivational talks. Then, when the torch goes out, Mr. Spitz returns to his home in the Bel Air area of Los Angeles until public attention returns to the Games.

Sitting in the back of a Lincoln Town Car on Tuesday, shuttling between media appearances, he launched into an abridged version of his motivational speech. "The truth is most people, for some reason, hold back, and only put out 80 percent effort."

This is what caused his disappointing performance in the 1968 Summer games, Mr. Spitz says. Just 18 years old, he predicted he would win six golds, but he spent a week enjoying Mexico City before the competition, instead of buckling down, and won just two golds and a silver. Four years later, in Munich, he stayed focused on the pool and became a hero.

But he doesn't stick to the storybook script, and minutes later evinces some cynicism. "The Olympics are about money, more money, and the most money," he says. "No one is doing anything for charity here."

In a culture that moves in what he calls "sound bites," he is thankful to have remained in the public consciousness far longer than most, thanks to a record that took a generation to break. Time to move on, he insists.

"I'm working on a bottled-water venture," he says. "It's real spring water from the Mississippi-Louisiana area. None of this purification-by-osmosis business," he says. "We've been working on it for two years, and we're in negotiations for distribution with foreign governments now. Water has become a real commodity."

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Spitz himself will continue to be a commodity. On Tuesday, he woke up and saw Mr. Phelps on the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing his eight medals -- in the same pose Mr. Spitz struck on posters 36 years ago.

"What does that say?" Mr. Spitz wondered. "Maybe one way or another, he's stuck with me."