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Overland Park man weighs in on who’s better: Phelps or Spitz?
BY KENT BABBThe Kansas City Star
OMAHA, Neb. | Ken Treadway was picking at a cluster of mixed greens when the topic of Michael Phelps came up.
Could Phelps actually do it? Could he break the most prized record in swimming: Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals in the 1972 Olympics?
Treadway looked toward two of the men sitting with him at a riverfront restaurant. He asked the men, Peter Deland and Don Gambril, what they thought. Deland and Gambril had known Treadway before he worked with Spitz during the 1968 and ’72 Olympics. They knew him after Treadway had retired from swimming, when he and his wife, Bettie, bought the house in Overland Park that they’ve lived in for 22 years.
“So,” Treadway says, his fork still in his hand, “who is the best swimmer of all time?”
The men thought for a moment.
“There’s no question,” Deland says. “It’s Michael Phelps.”
Now it’s Gambril’s turn.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Phelps is definitely the heir apparent. I still think it’s Spitz.”
Treadway smiled and took another bite of black and bleu salad. He was in town to receive the Presidents Award for lifetime achievement by the International Swimming Hall of Fame. He’ll get that today. But on the banks of the Missouri River on Saturday, the 70-something men with chlorine in their blood had a debate going.
Treadway went through heaven and hell with Spitz. The son of Oklahoma sharecroppers had been on the Olympic team staff while the wunderkind blazed through the ’68 Games for gold medals in the 400- and 800-meter freestyle relays.
Then, four years later, Treadway was on the platform when Spitz won seven golds, a number never before touched or even dreamed of — until Phelps came along. And Treadway was in the coaches’ condo when shots rang out in an adjacent building: Palestinian terrorists had assault rifles in their hands and hostages in their control. Treadway’s first thoughts weren’t of his own safety but were for the 22-year-old swimmer he’d grown to think of like a son.
Treadway and Spitz remained friends long after the triumph and the ordeal. That was Spitz’s final Olympics, and Treadway began downshifting toward retirement. Now, Treadway is the bridge that spans the 36-year gap between Spitz and Phelps.
Treadway leaned back in his chair and looked out the window toward the Qwest Center, where in a few hours Phelps would qualify for his eighth event.
Treadway’s friends were waiting for Treadway to chime in.
“You know what?” Treadway says. “It’s Mike Phelps. And I think Mark would tell you the same thing.”
•••
Treadway recognized the sound of gunfire. He had been a soldier in the Army, and he learned during three years in Korea what enemy rifle fire sounded like.
Treadway rolled over and out of bed, staying low while he ran down the hall to tell his fellow Olympic team staff members to get away from the windows. It was the night after the final swimming event of the 1972 Olympics.
Treadway didn’t know if the shots had come from his building or the one he could see 200 yards out his window. When the shots stopped and 11 Israeli athletes had been taken hostage, Treadway peeked out his hotel window and saw the outline of a terrorist wearing a brown mask. At the end of the ordeal, all the hostages were dead, killed by members of the group Black September.
“Sad day in the world,” he says now.
Treadway won’t talk much about this part, but he’ll tell you what he can. Coaches and athletes stayed in different quarters at the ’72 Games. Spitz was an American sports hero and was Jewish; Olympics officials feared he might be a terrorist target. A few hours after standing on the gold-medal platform for the seventh time, Spitz was on the floor of an Olympic Village condo, waiting for someone to tell him what to do next.
Treadway says Spitz was used to attention and doing things in secret. When he left the Munich Schwimmhalle, Treadway instructed his wife and their 17-year-old daughter, Tanya, to drive a van with Spitz crouched on the rear floorboard. Treadway would follow them in another van, and the media and fans would think Spitz was with him.
“For him to get out of a car in front of a stadium,” Treadway says, “it becomes very alarming. We had to use a little bit of deception.”
Within hours of the first gunshots, Treadway recalls, Spitz had been whisked out of the building in secret by Olympics and U.S. officials and was on his way out of Germany.
Bettie Treadway had no idea her husband was safe until she heard an update on Armed Forces Radio, saying no Americans had been hurt in the terrorist attack. She was relieved but wanted no more of Munich or its Olympics. She sold her two tickets to the closing ceremonies and took an early flight to Copenhagen, Denmark. It was there two days later that Treadway was reunited with his family.
“We all felt like: Thank God,” Bettie Treadway says.
When Treadway returned to the United States, he called Spitz.
“We didn’t talk much about it,” Treadway says. “We were still sorely in a state of shock. We were just glad it was all over.”
•••
Things started changing for Ken Treadway after his career in swimming was over. He was a man who had learned swimming by jumping into deep crevasses when his father dammed up the creek behind their farmhouse. He became a swimming coach in Oklahoma before going to work as athletic director and coach for Phillips Petroleum.
Things were simpler then, but they kept getting more complicated as Treadway became more involved in swimming. He says Spitz might have been even better had he been better prepared for the media and the demands of the athlete who emerges as America’s face.
These days, things are different. Technology and training have improved, to the point that a new swimsuit has raised questions over whether it is ethical to wear the $500 suit in the Olympics.
“Yeah, things have changed,” Treadway says. “I try to think they’ve mostly changed for the better.”
Some have not. There are agents and corporate sponsors, allegations of doping and aging swimmers whose astounding feats at this year’s trials are overshadowed by distrust. Phelps has media coaches, an army of agents and representatives, and has been trained to answer questions with stock answers with rare sprinkles of personality.
Spitz, though, was naturally quiet. He was focused and prepared, and he had no interest when Treadway’s daughter, who was 17 at the time, tried to introduce Spitz to Simon & Garfunkel and the hypnotic bliss of the hippie generation.
Treadway admired Spitz’s simple ways. They forged a friendship that Treadway says continues today.
Treadway is 78 now. He has watched as swimming has gone from a niche activity to a full-fledged sport, complete with multimillion-dollar endorsement deals for top swimmers.
Although they competed in eras three decades apart, Treadway says he sees similarities in Spitz and Phelps. Both are similarly shaped, with broad shoulders and long arms. Both are unflinching competitors, and both have the passion to remain dedicated long enough to have a chance at seven or eight gold medals.
If they swam against each other today, with the same advantages and same distractions, Treadway says it would be a “dead heat.”
“Actually,” he says, “probably a tie. Both of them have that vision. You really have to stop and think about it: An athlete like this comes along maybe once a decade. And I’ve been lucky enough to watch both of them.”
•••
Treadway sits in that riverfront restaurant and jaws with the old crew. They debate this and that, take a bite, and get back to talking.
After decades of traveling and watching Olympians, this meal is as close as Treadway will get to this year’s Games.
He and his wife will not be going to Beijing next month. They can no longer handle the physical demands of long-distance travel, and it’s not exactly cheap, either. The last time Bettie went to the Olympics, in 1972, she sold $8,000 worth of Phillips stock to finance the trip.
“It’s just not possible anymore,” Bettie says.
Treadway says he spoke last week with Spitz, and the two talked about Phelps and the chances that the old record might be broken; how the bridge between Spitz and Phelps was closing with each of Phelps’ races.
Treadway hasn’t met Phelps but watched “every minute” of the 23-year-old’s events last week. He paid close attention even though his coaching and mentoring days are over. Yeah, Treadway is partial to the youngster. He says Phelps has proven he is the greatest swimmer of all-time, even before he challenges Spitz’s record.
But when Phelps does try, Treadway will be somewhere with a television.
“We’ll be watching. I can guarantee you that,” he says. “I’ll be pulling for him.”