With his health worries now in check, Spitz is free to do what he wants. On Sunday he's leaving for Sydney to watch the Olympics, where he expects to see medals won with the help of other kinds of drugs — performance-enhancing ones. In 1972, drug testing was just beginning. Today, tests are more sophisticated. Still, officials only test for certain drugs even now, but not nearly the number they could. Thus, he says, there is "widespread" use of performance-enhancing drugs in the Olympics.

Sadly, it's not only adults using illegal and dangerous drugs. In some countries, he says, athletes in their teens may be taking them unknowingly. They can be slipped into foods or simply passed off as vitamins.

In that light, Spitz expects a major related story to come out of Sydney. Still, the sport always outlives the scandal, right?

"In the past but not in the future," he said. "When they extinguish the flame on these Olympics . . . this drug thing, how they react to what takes place, we don't know. They're going to have to adapt and come to some sort of resolve as to how to handle this fairly. I have no clue of what that could be or who it's going to involve. But I can guarantee you this: There's going to be something come up, and it's going to come up in a big way. And they're not going to be able to handle it fairly. It'll be a knee-jerk reaction. They've shown a history of that."

All of which would mean more nasty Olympic business.

For his part, Spitz can only shake his head at what he considers a lack of broad-based drug testing. And the irony. On one hand, it's drugs that are threatening the Olympics. On the other hand, it's drugs that likely saved his life.

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