GOLD AND BLACK IN MUNICH.

Byline: Karen Crouse

Mark Spitz was vacationing with his family in Hawaii last month when an inquisitive stranger cornered him.

The scene, like the butterfly stroke, is second nature to the longtime L.A. resident, but this time there was an amusing twist.

``Excuse me,'' the stranger said, ``but you look so familiar. Are you Bill Clinton?''

The star of the 1972 Summer Olympics had to laugh at being mistaken for the 42nd president of the United States. What could the two-time Olympic swimmer - who used to be confused with the late actor Omar Sharif - and the two-term president possibly have in common, other than a head of gray?

Richard Milhous Nixon held the country's highest office when Spitz cemented his place in Olympic history 25 years ago today, by winning his seventh gold medal as the third swimmer in the world-record setting U.S. 400-meter medley relay.

Spitz, a 22-year-old dental student at the time, earlier had set world records in the 100 and 200 freestyles and the 100 and 200 butterflys and had anchored the world-record setting 400 and 800 freestyle relays.

Four months after briefly quitting the sport, Spitz had become the most decorated athlete in Olympic history.

His life would never be the same. Neither, as it turned out, would the Olympic Games.

An appreciative crowd at the Munich Schwimmhalle lapped Spitz with waves of applause after his final relay race. Within a day the cheers would give way to tears.

A few hours after Spitz returned to his apartment in the Olympic Village after a celebratory meal, eight Arab terrorists would scale the 6-foot wire fence that encircled the athletes' sanctuary and slaughter the Olympic ideal.

The intruders, members of the pro-Palestinian Black September group, forced their way into the apartments of members of the Israeli contingent and killed two men while Spitz, a Jew, lay sleeping in a building only a few hundred yards away.

Spitz wouldn't learn two Israelis had been killed and nine others taken hostage until five hours after the fact, when he made his way to another corner of the Village to attend a previously scheduled news conference.

After a tense, terse meeting with 1,000 reporters, Spitz was whisked out of the country, a half-day ahead of his scheduled departure, on a commercial flight from Munich to London.

Shortly thereafter, at a military airport outside Munich in the waning hours of Sept. 5, the remaining Israeli hostages were killed in a shootout between West German sharpshooters and the terrorists who were demanding the safe release of 200 prisoners from Israeli jails.

Spitz, now 47, said as the day's horror unfolded he wasn't paralyzed by the notion he might make an alluring target for the terrorists as a result of his newfound superstardom and his Jewish background.

``I never even thought about that,'' Spitz said.

Over the ensuing years, Spitz has had the time but rarely the inclination to peel back all the layers of symbolism that colored his 1972 Olympic experience. Asked if he ever reflected on the incongruities of a Jew emerging as the hero of the first Olympics on German soil since Adolf Hitler's propaganda-tainted Games in Berlin in 1936, his achievements only to be overshadowed by more Jewish bloodshed, Spitz said simply, ``It's not my nature.''

If introspection largely has eluded him, there's a reason. While still a teen-ager, Spitz realized his pride in his heritage was a Pandora's box. Better it should remain tightly sealed lest Spitz drown in bitterness.

Growing up in Northern California, Spitz had experienced the sting of anti-Semitism. There were swim clubs he couldn't join because of exclusionary membership practices. Even as a member of the most elite swim team of all - the U.S. Olympic squad - Spitz couldn't escape prejudice.

In 1968 in Mexico City he was taunted by a couple of teammates who repeatedly called him ``Jew boy.''

Spitz, who had a shot at seven gold medals in 1968, became thoroughly demoralized and took home two relay gold medals, a silver and a bronze.

In the 3-1/2 years following his misery in Mexico City, Spitz would break 13 individual world records. He already had an established if not exalted place in swimming history.

So in May of 1972, Spitz returned home to Sacramento after his senior year at Indiana and told his coach Sherm Chavoor, ``I've been in swimming for 14 years. What have I got to prove?''

Recalled Spitz, ``I sat on my butt for two weeks and did nothing.''

In the end, Spitz's pride pushed him back into the pool. ``It was about self-esteem, not the money,'' Spitz said. ``I knew that in 1968 I had fallen far short of what I was capable of doing.''

To his surprise, Spitz was able to parlay redemption into cold, hard cash. The seven gold medals netted him a quick $5 million in endorsement contracts. Dental school went the way of the tooth fairy.

Since 1972, Spitz said he has returned to Munich ``lots of times,'' most recently in July to film a 25th anniversary show that aired in Europe.

On one of his first return trips after the 1972 Games, Spitz brought along his wife Suzy, whom he met shortly after the Olympics and married in Beverly Hills in 1973. The couple has two sons, Matthew, 15, and Justin, 5.

``He showed me his apartment in the Olympic Village and he showed me where the Israelis who were captured were staying and it was a stone's throw away,'' Suzy Spitz said. ``It was frightening to see how close it was.''

There are few signs that immortality rests in the home the Spitzes moved into 21 years ago. All the Olympic medals are tucked away in a bank vault. There's a 20-minute videotape of Spitz's history-making swims that was a gift from ABC, the network that televised the 1972 Summer Games.

But it draws more dust than attention. Spitz recently retrieved it after Munich teammate Jerry Heidenreich, the runner-up to Spitz in the 100-meter freestyle, telephoned looking for a copy of the race.

Spitz's swims are etched in the memories of the people of Munich, who mobbed him during a visit there in 1992 for the filming of the 20-year retrospective.

``It was remarkable how he still held the crowd,'' said Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan.

To think in the years immediately after Munich, Spitz said, ``In a couple of years I'll be put out to pasture. And what will I do then?''

Spitz found his second calling in real estate and, most recently, as a spokesman for SmarTalk Teleservices, a phone-card company that began trading on NASDAQ last year. In his spare time he also coaches a masters team at UCLA.

To watch Spitz pace the pool deck, mixing lessons on freestyle's high-elbow recovery with lectures on oxygen debt, is to imagine Picasso teaching an adult-education class in painting.

It's impossible to frame the brush strokes with which Spitz transformed his sport. He inspired a generation to swim. A quarter of a century later his legacy remains alive and kicking furiously up and back for laps on end.

Christie Ciraulo, a member of the UCLA masters program, was asked after a recent practice if she could remember watching the telecasts of Spitz racing to his seven gold medals.

``Remember?'' Ciraulo, 43, replied. ``Are you kidding? I'm getting goose bumps just talking about it.''

Some days Spitz slips into the pool and swims alongside the accountants and attorneys and teachers. For them, no amount of chlorine can dilute the experience.

``Imagine that you were a soccer player and got to kick the ball around with Pele,'' Ciraulo said. ``Or a tennis player and you got to hit balls with Martina Navratilova. Or a baseball player and you got to play catch with Joe DiMaggio. Well, I get to work out with the God of swimming.''

THE GOLDEN SPITZ

Here's how Mark Spitz won his seven gold medals in Munich in 1972. Times in parentheses are the clockings of the 1996 Olympic champions:

200-meter butterfly: Spitz broke his own world record by .83 seconds with a clocking of 2:00.77 (1:56.51).

400-meter freestyle relay: On the same night of his 200 butterfly triumph, Spitz anchored the U.S. team that included Dave Edgar, Jerry Heidenreich and John Murphy to a world record of 3:36.42 (3:15.41).

200-meter freestyle: Spitz came from behind in the final 50 meters to beat U.S. teammate Steve Genter with a world-record clocking of 1:52.78 (1:47.63).

100-meter butterfly: Spitz touched 1.29 seconds ahead of silver medalist Bruce Robertson of Canada with a world-record swim of 54.27 (52.27).

800-meter freestyle relay: Spitz anchored the team that included John Kinsella, Fred Tyler and Steve Genter to a world-record clocking of 7:35.78 (7:14.84).

100-meter freestyle: After his club coach talked him out of scratching this event, Spitz edged U.S. nemesis Jerry Heidenreich by .43 seconds and set a world record of 51.22 (48.74).

400-meter medley relay: Spitz swam the butterfly leg on the team that included Mike Stamm, Tom Bruce and Jerry Heidenreich and set a world record of 3:45.16 (3:34.84).

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Chart

PHOTO (1--color) Mark Spitz's life would not be the same after winning seven gold medals at Munich in 1972. Neither would the Olympics.

(2) no caption (Mark Spitz)

Associated Press

CHART: THE GOLDEN SPITZ (see text)