Posted on September 4, 2019
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| Florence Griffith-Joyner is sometimes called Flo-Jo. |
The world of athletic records, including world records, is filled with -ests. Usain Bolt (Jamaica) and Florence Griffith-Joyner (U.S) have the records for fastest 100-meter sprints. Renauld Lavillenie (France) and Yelena Isinbayeva (Russia) have the records for the highest pole vault. Lasha Talakhadze (Georgia) and Tatiana Kashirina (Russia) have the records for the heaviest weights lifted in the Olympics.
But some athletic records are specific to only one nation or one league, and others are more like "first human to..." Today we celebrate the anniversaries of two such records:
On this date in 1972, American swimmer Mark Spitz became the first competitor - male or female, in any sport, Summer or Winter Olympics - to win seven gold medals in a single Olympic Games. The great thing about being the first person to do something is that world records are always being broken - someday, someone WILL run the 100 meters just a leeeeetle bit faster than Bolt! - but the "first" will always be first.
One thing about Spitz is that he swam at a time when both swimmers were shaving off all their body hair to make their times faster. (Yes, men were shaving it all off, too.) Mark Spitz was told he couldn't grow a beard or mustache, because it would slow him down. But that rule bugged him; I guess just to be contrary, he grew a mustache and beat everyone else anyway!
He was going to shave off the mustache for the Olympics, I read, but everyone was talking about the remarkable fact that such a great swimmer had facial hair - so Spitz decided to keep it. And apparently it wasn't a problem - he entered seven races, and he won them all! And he also set seven world records while doing it!!
The 1972 Olympics was Spitz's second Olympics - even though he was only 22 years old! - and he went ahead and retired from competitive swimming. It took 36 years for someone to beat Spitz's seven-gold-medals-in-one-Olympics - and of course it was another American swimmer, Michael Phelps, who won eight golds in 2008.
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| But, notice! - Phelps didn't win WITH A MUSTACHE! |
On this date in 2002, the Oakland Athletics (often called the Oakland A's) set an American League Baseball record by winning 20 consecutive games.
That's amazing - but there has been a new record set, in 2017, by the Cleveland Indians, who won 22 games in a row. Also, the record for the longest winning streak in all of Major League Baseball is 26 - set by the New York Giants of the National League waaaaaaay back in 1916!!
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