On September 4, 1972, American swimmer Mark Spitz won his seventh gold medal at the Munich Olympics, swimming the butterfly leg of the 4x100 metre medley relay. It was his last race. No athlete had ever won seven golds at a single Games.
Spitz had already won six, and he had won every one of them in world record time. He had taken four individual titles, in the 100 and 200 metre freestyle and the 100 and 200 metre butterfly, plus two relay golds. He had been expected to win seven at Mexico City in 1968 and had left with two, a shortfall that had followed him for four years and shaped how he approached these Games.
The medley relay was close. Spitz's butterfly leg kept the American team in contact, and Jerry Heidenreich brought it home in a world record of three minutes 48.16 seconds. That afternoon the Games were already overshadowed: Palestinian gunmen had taken Israeli athletes hostage the previous morning, and Spitz, who is Jewish, was flown out of Munich before the closing ceremony for his own safety.
The record stood thirty-six years. It fell in 2008, when Michael Phelps won eight golds in Beijing. Spitz's seven remain the second-best single-Games haul in swimming history, and every one of his Munich wins set a world record.