Diary Of A Champion

In the first eight days of the Seoul Games, no athlete was busier than U.S. swimmer Matt Biondi, 22, a rosy-cheeked University of California graduate whose five golds, one silver and one bronze—a haul eclipsed in Olympic swimming annals only by Mark Spitz's seven gold medals in '72—made him one of his sport's three big stars at the Games, along with Janet Evans of the U.S. and Kristin Otto of East Germany (see following stories). Beginning on Sept. 17, Biondi, a butterflyer-freestyler, kept a diary for SI of his breathlessly successful visit to Seoul:

PRELUDE

It's been an endless week of sitting and waiting since we got here from our training camp in Hawaii. I'll be glad to get started tomorrow. I've stopped going anywhere because, when I do, there are always people who pull and tug on me and want a picture and an autograph. I'm not into that before a race—or ever, really. I like my privacy. That and cheap rent are two of the reasons I like living in Berkeley. People there don't recognize me, or if they do, they think I'm a basketball player because I'm six-six.

I skipped the opening ceremonies today to rest up. I marched in them four years ago, and my eyes were as big as saucers. I felt like a kid in Disneyland at those L.A. Games. I got the last spot on the 4 X 100-free relay and won a gold medal even though no one had ever heard of me. Mostly I'd been a water polo player in high school. I remember rooming with Rowdy Gaines in the Olympic Village and calling him Gilligan because he wore this floppy hat and was always so forgetful. Rowdy's a great guy. At the trials this year, after he missed making the team in the 100 free, he swam over and gave me a hug across the lane line and said, "Well, Gilligan won't be coming with you this time." I kind of miss him.

I'd like to say something. I'm doing this diary because I want to voice the other side of the Olympics. Everyone will be counting the medals and the times and the world records, and making this big judgment: Is Matt a success or a failure? It seems there's so much emphasis put on that stuff and so little on how a person grows as he works his way toward the Olympics. To me, it's the path getting there that counts, not the cheese at the end of the maze. Having said that, I have to admit that I've got a case of prerace jitters right now. I want to win. After all, I've trained my whole career for this.

DAY 1

I qualified second in the 200-meter freestyle this morning and felt real good. The 200 is going to be my toughest race, what with Michael Gross of West Germany in there, and Artur Wojdat of Poland and Anders Holmertz of Sweden and some others. Seems like every country has a big gun in the 200.

I'm really a 100-free swimmer who has to stretch to go up to the 200 and go down to make it in the 50. People don't seem to realize that I'm coming here with only one world record, in the 100 free. Spitz had world records in all of his individual events going into the 1972 Olympics. And mostly he was swimming against just Americans. Nowadays you've got East and West Germans. Swedes, Australians, Soviets—and they're all great. Times have changed.

I haven't been home for two months now because of the trials and training camps, and I'm finding myself thinking about it a lot. I've been reading letters from friends over and over because they make home seem closer. My first real coach, Stu Kahn, sent me a kind of joke certificate honoring me as the most successful athlete he has ever coached. When I was 10 years old he said someday I would be an Olympic champion like John Naber, who won four golds and a silver at Montreal. I hope he knew what he was talking about.

Stu's the one who taught me the stroke fundamentals and the so-called feel for the water that my current coach, Nort Thornton from Cal, has built upon. Too many U.S. coaches think that feel for the water is some magical gift that you can't possibly teach. I disagree, but then, as someone who didn't start swimming seriously until he was 15, I can't believe the way most young U.S. swimmers are coached. They're put through boring megayardage workouts from age six, which takes all the fun out of swimming. Someday I'd like to start a swim camp that doesn't even have lane lines or blocks and just teaches kids to feel the water and use proper technique.