When Kenneth Treadway makes a Olympic swimming prediction, people should listen.

Not necessarily because of his 78 years of wisdom, though give that due credit too. Listen because Treadway has impacted swimming, and the best swimmers, dating back to the middle of the last century.

After coaching the Bartlesville YMCA for several seasons, Treadway, a 1947 Muskogee Central graduate, organized the Phillips 66 Splash Club, now in its 58th year of operation. His influence was instrumental to Phillips Petroleum Company becoming a national sponsor of swimming and diving in the 1970s.

That, and some innovations in training led to his selection to lead the U.S. Olympic men’s team at the 1964 games at Tokyo, the women at the 1968 games at Mexico City and the men again in 1972 at Munich, Germany. One of those on the ‘72 team happened to one Mark Spitz, who swam to a record seven gold medals that year after winning two golds in relay events at the 1968 games.

But back to the prediction: Is current sensation Michael Phelps destined to break Spitz’s 36-year-old record in Beijing this month?

Treadway’s take: Absolutely.

“No one will be more pleased with that than Mark himself,” Treadway said from his home in Overland Park, Kan. “I think Phelps will win five individual gold and three on the relays. And I’ll go further — I’ll go out on a limb and say the men’s team will win half the swim medals in the games and the women a third.”

Treadway himself had a hand in the foundation that’s led to such success. Not only did he coach Spitz through the highs — and the lows — of those 1972 games, before then, his “circle swimming” workout plans and serpentine heats in meets made both practice and competitions more efficient. He also helped establish qualifying standards used in determining who competes in Olympic trials.

Those highs were evident in the gold Spitz won. Those old enough to remember know about the lows, only perhaps not as intimately as Treadway and Spitz did.

The Palestinian militant group, Black September, seized 11 Israeli athletes as hostages during the early morning hours of Sept. 5, 1972. By the time the incident had ended, all 11 athletes were dead as well as a German police officer.

Treadway, a Army veteran who served during the Korean War, knew instantly what he was hearing just 200 meters away in the quarters of the Americans’ staff, a building which was separate from where the athletes were housed.

“Being military, you never forget the sound of machine gun fire and I knew that’s what woke me up,” he said. “I went room to room and told our staff to stay in the room and get low. From where we were, you could see masked terrorists on the balcony.”

Within hours of the first gunshots, Treadway recalls, Spitz had been whisked out of the building in secret by Olympics and U.S. officials and was on his way out of Germany. It was a strange twist to a familiar scene in those games — Treadway’s wife, Bettie, and daughter Tanya would leave the Munich Schwinnhalle each night to drive a van with Spitz crouched on the rear floorboard. Treadway would follow them in another van, and the media and fans would think Spitz was with him.

“The crowds following him were intense,” Treadway said. “When the terrorist attack occurred, that security was, you might say, raised a few levels.”

Not only were coaches and players separated, so were spouses. Bettie Treadway, who her husband met while the two attended Central High School (she was the former Bettie Mathews), had no idea her husband was safe until she heard an update on Armed Forces Radio in her Munich hotel, saying no Americans had been hurt in the terrorist attack.