Canada at the Summer Olympics became the first Canadian Summer Olympian to win a medal in four straight Olympics. After George Hodgson won two gold medals in the 1912 Stockholm games, it would be 72 years before Alex Baumann became the second Canadian swimmer to win Olympic gold, when he won both individual medley events in world record time in the 1984 Los Angeles games. Victor Davis (1984), Anne Ottenbrite (1984), Mark Tewksbury (1992) and Penny Oleksiak (2016) are the only other Canadian swimmers to win gold medals. In 2004, Canada failed to win a medal of any colour in swimming for the first time
Mark Spitz top amateur athlete in the United States. Spitz also set a number of world records during the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials held in Chicago's Portage Park in 1972. He was nicknamed "Mark the Shark" by his teammates. At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich (West Germany), Spitz was back to maintain his bid for the six gold medals. He did even better, winning seven Olympic gold medals. Furthermore, Spitz set a new world record in each of the seven events – 100-meter freestyle (51.22), 200-meter freestyle (1:52.78), 100-meter butterfly (54.27), 200-meter butterfly (2:00.70), 4×100-meter freestyle relay (3:26.42), 4×200-meter freestyle relay