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It’s been 24 years, but Matt Vogel can still remember the moment and the feelings he had when he looked up at the scoreboard at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal to see where he had finished in his 100-meter butterfly final. What he saw, he said, made him feel like he was walking on water.
Actually, Vogel had just flown through water.
Vogel’s 54.35 finish in the 100 butterfly earned the 18-year-old a gold medal, and he brought home another as a member of the world-record-setting 4-by-100 medley relay team.
His gold-medal performances may have happened more than two decades ago, but the start of the Olympics still evokes emotions from Vogel, who took over the stewardship of the Canoe City Swim Club in Old Town this summer.
Opening ceremonies for the Sydney Games are scheduled for Friday.
“It was a numbness, an unbeliveable feeling. It wasn’t a feeling of disbelief because I wanted to win, but it was just a feeling of gratification,” recalled Vogel, now 43 and a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
“It brings back a lot of memories. I certainly will be thrilled to watch the races themselves and I certainly hope the Americans do well but as a swimming enthusiast I’m excited by any good performance whether it’s American or otherwise.”
The 1976 U.S. men’s team is still considered one of the strongest Olympics squads ever — a fact that current U.S. backstroker Lenny Krayzelburg mentioned recently in some back-and-forth trash talk with the Australians. Vogel swam with U.S. stars like John Naber, Jim Montgomery and Gary Hall, (whose son Gary Hall Jr. is a member of this year’s team). Vogel’s roommate Rod Strachan won the 400 individual medley.
All told, the Americans left Montreal with 13 golds that year. It’s something of which Vogel is still proud.
“It was a magical month that I spent with those guys,” he said. “They were the best in the world. Except for my event every world record was broken and I only missed mine by eight one-hundreths of a second. We were all close and we trained well together. It’s impressive to have that distinction and to have been a part of that.”
Vogel actually beat Hall in the butterfly race. Vogel certainly wasn’t a favorite to win the gold, and that could help Portland’s Ian Crocker, Maine’s first home-grown swimming Olympian who, like Vogel, will also be swimming the 100 fly and could also swim on the relay team.
Vogel has seen Crocker swim a few times, including the race at the 1998 Summer Nationals in which Crocker clocked a 1:49.48 in the 200 free, the youngest U.S. swimmer ever to have gone under 1:50 in that event.
“I’m impressed with him,” Vogel said. “I’m impressed with how he looks in the water, how fluid he is, and from what I’ve heard from everyone he has a tremendous disposition.”
Like Crocker, Vogel was a surprise at the Olympic trials. He actually placed third at the trials — only the top two finalists go to the Olympics now — and dropped a second from his time between the trials and the Games.
The training camp in Canton, Ohio, was a big help in preparing for the Olympics, but Vogel was inspired by the collection of swimming talent.
“It was the greatest swimmers in the world coming together for a month and everything rubbed off on you,” he said. “The atmosphere of the training camp was relaxed. We were almost totally isolated. There were no beaches, no fanfare, no women, nothing but swimming, eating and sleeping. During that time we did great training and sharpened ourselves up.”
Once he was finished swimming, Vogel chose to leave the Olympic village and went home to Fort Wayne, Ind., to get ready for his sophomore year at the University of Tennessee.
He returned to Knoxville that fall but his interest in swimming dipped, and he left the Tennessee team at one point.
Vogel rejoined the squad and was on board for the Vols’ 1978 NCAA championship. But that’s where it ended. After the Olympics, Vogel felt, there was nowhere else to go.
“Swimming after the Olympics was a struggle for me. I quit swimming,” he said. “My senior year was difficult and I didn’t even make NCAAs. I wasn’t motivated. So (going to the Olympics) changed me a lot. I don’t know if it was for the better or not but it certainly changed me.”
Vogel used up his eligibility but left school without graduating. He turned to coaching, and that’s what he’s done for the past 21 years, from California to Florida. When he heard of Canoe City’s coaching vacancy he jumped at the chance to move to Old Town.
“I think this club has tremendous potential,” he said. “I’m real excited about the opportunity here. I’ve never had such a well-rounded type of opportunity anywhere that I’ve coached. Very few clubs in the country have the opportunity where they have control of their own destiny and a community that’s very, very supportive of swimming. I love Maine. I’ve always wanted to come raise my children in a town that’s more like Mayberry than Jacksonville, Florida, was.”
Not only does this week bring back memories for Vogel, but it also brings a twinge of jealousy. Vogel grew up within 500 miles of Montreal, so Canada didn’t have the exotic aura of other Olympic sites like Sidney, Seoul, Korea and Barcelona, Spain.
And those gold medals? Vogel said his mother, who lives in a nursing home in Fort Wayne, keeps them for him.
“She takes care of them for me,” he said. “They belong to her.”
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