As Kingston and  Elmbridge’s finest prepare for the biggest fortnight of their lives, an Olympic legend has warned being the world’s best is all about preparation.
 

Fifteen athletes from the two boroughs will be part of the biggest and best prepared  Team  GB  squad  to compete at an Olymics when the London Games officially opens in Stratford tonight.
 

American swimming star Mark Spitz famously won seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics in Munich and to achieve that feat he started training for the specific Olympic programme in Germany two years in advance.
 

Six months before the defining moment of the 62-year-old’s career, life was continuing as part of a plan hatched in 1970.
 

Spitz, who helped former 400m hurdles ace Ed Moses start the Bushy Park parkrun earlier this year ahead of February’s Laureus World Sports Awards in London, reckoned it was his attention to detail that made all the difference.
 

“Six months out, I was working out and training really hard and just trying to keep my focus,” he said.
 

“I didn’t have to sweat too much to make the Olympics.  I was pretty fast, I was a world record holder and the US Olympic trials were really just going to be a warm-up.  I was lucky it workd out that way.
 

“I had practised the Olympic programme two years earlier.  I did the same events on the same days as they would be in Munich so I had experience of it.
 

“So I did the four individual events at the trials and I felt like I was on track, swimming really well, and was just taking each day at a time.”
 

Spitz’s efforts have gone down in Olympic folklore and while you would imagine his seventh gold was the most satisfying, it wasn’t for the reasons you might expect.
 

“All seven medals  were satisfying. The first event – the 200m butterfly – I had finished dead last in the last Olympics and I was then the world record holder,” he said.
 

“By winning that first up I proved I was really prepared. The 100m freestyle, the last event, was very important.  It is like the 100m sprint in track and field.
 

“There are 15 events, but if I didn’t win that I wouldn’t have been recognised as the fastest swimmer in the world.
 

“Those two gold medals were the standout events for me.”