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Mark retreated from Mexico City like a wounded shark and enrolled that winter at Indiana University, the nation's most aquatics-minded learning institution. There he came under the wise counsel of Coach Jim ("Doc") Counsilman, who got Mark off to a racing start by taking members of the team aside and quietly telling them to forget everything that they had heard about Spitz and to give him a chance. Mark soon found himself making friends and influencing people; he was eventually named co-captain of the team.
Now, after a spectacular career at Indiana (he led the team to three straight N.C.A.A. championships and broke a dozen individual world records) and his Olympic triumphs, Spitz is altogether willing to be lionized. His thick, lank hair and trim mustache (rare in the crew-cut world of swimming) are badges of studly cool. Though he may act a bit like Bobby Fischer ("he got more money for himself, which he deserved," says Mark. "I might be doing the same thing if there was professional swimming"), the image he really hankers after is Joe Namath's. He also likes to think of himself as a sort of swimming bellwether. Once at an A.A.U. meet in Houston, Spitz and other swimmers were dissatisfied with the starting blocks that were to be used. When A.A.U. officials refused the swimmers' request to change them, Mark called in a carpenter the night before the meet began and had him change one of the blocks. "Once one was changed," he recalls proudly, "they had to change them all."
Spitz still exhibits some of the same callow flippancy that has long got him into trouble. Asked if he finds any irony in his playing the conquering Jew in Germany, Mark shrugged and said, "Actually, I've always liked this country." Then he added, tapping a lampshade, "Even though this shade is probably made out of one of my aunts." Bad blood welled up last week between Mark and Teammate Steve Genter, before they competed in the 200-meter freestyle. Word got around that Mark, upon hearing that Genter had been hospitalized, had said: "Well, this may sound terrible, but at least I don't have to worry about him." The situation grew worse when Genter charged after the race that Spitz had tried to talk him out of entering. Mark's rebuttal: "I was simply as concerned as the other Americans were about Steve's condition."
Mark's ever-widening eye for the girls has also caused a few ripples. Until recently, he had been dating U.S. 800-meter Freestyle Swimmer Ann Simmons, 19. Since arriving in Munich, he has been seeing Jo Ann Harshbarger, 15, who is entered in the same event as Simmons. Though the Olympic regimen and Village logistics prevent too close a liaison, the feeling prevails among Olympians that broken hearts on land do not lead to broken records in the pool. Says an older member of the U.S. women's team: "The least he could have done was put the make on somebody from a different event." A dental student who returns to Indiana in February, Mark has also cast an interested if clinical eye on his early rival for the swimming honors, Shane Gould. Says he, clucking, "She looks pretty good with her braces off."