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                                                                                OLYMPICS, Page 66

1992 SUMMER GAMES

SWIMMING: A Bigger Splash


After lagging behind East Germany, U.S. women seem poised to
win in every stroke and in record times

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III -- With reporting by Brian Cazeneuve/New
York


    At the Seoul Olympics there were two U.S. women's swim
teams: Janet Evans, who won three individual gold medals, and
everybody else, who won none. While the East German women swept
to 10 golds and a total of 21 medals, the non-Evans Americans
scraped by with a silver and three bronzes.

    In no other Olympic sport has the competitive picture been
so transformed. East Germany doesn't exist anymore; neither
does the steroid program that artificially enhanced its
athletes. Meanwhile, so much American talent has ripened that
Evans didn't qualify for this year's team in the 400-m
individual medley, an event in which she won gold four years
ago. Overall, U.S. women stand a good chance of winning a
record-tying 11 of 15 events, and eight team members rank as at
least co-favorites in one or more individual races. For the
first time in decades, the U.S. women are more formidable than
the U.S. men, who have long dominated the sport. Says freestyler
Jenny Thompson, who may win five medals: "It's O.K. if people
expect a lot of us. We expect more."

    The resurgence of American women is not precisely a
triumph of carefree amateurism over the grim professionalism of
the hulking East Germans. While the U.S. athletes are from a
land of backyard swimming pools and neighborly recreation
rather than national regimens, they too are obsessive athletes.
Several were immersed in the sport while still in diapers by
eager relatives. Evans, not atypically, swam her first
competitive race at age 5. As a child, Janie Wagstaff had to be
counseled not to reach into the next lane and grab an opponent's
foot. Even now, she admits, "when I'm swimming against someone,
I want her to drown."

    Most U.S. team members are dedicated to training and
resent new NCAA rules restricting collegiate athletes to 20
hours of practice a week. Thompson is so fitness conscious that
she "relaxes" from swimming with an aerobics workout. Nicole
Haislett idolizes Arnold Schwarzenegger and often poses flexing
her considerable biceps. There are even rumors of steroid use
among U.S. women. One, Angel Martino, was banned for 16 months
after testing positive for nandrolone at the 1988 U.S. team
trials. Now she is back in the 50-m freestyle and maybe a relay.

    The American women's real secret formula is what it has
always been: talent cultivated through hard work. Evans, for
example, looked barely pubescent in Seoul. Her small, flat body,
coupled with the startling turnover rate of her stroke, yielded
textbook efficiency underwater. Now 20 and womanly, 2 in. taller
and 15 lbs. heavier, she says, "I really have to be aware of
getting my speed up, so I train even longer." Evans probably
ranks as the safest bet for gold on this gilded squad. She is
returning in the 400-m and 800-m freestyle, not having lost at
either distance in five years. True, she isn't close to her best
times, but neither is anyone else. As the world's most famous
woman swimmer, she has cashed in. After spurning commercial
offers in order to maintain eligibility while she swam at
Stanford, Evans now endorses Speedo swimsuits, Fuji film,
Ray-Ban sunglasses and other products.

    Her former role as team baby and mascot has been taken
over by this year's huggable 16-year-old, Nadia Anita Nall, a
high school junior from suburban Baltimore. Nall's first name
was bestowed in honor of Nadia Comaneci, who won Olympic gold
as a gymnast in 1976 while Nall's father watched TV awaiting
her birth. But the name was dropped from family usage in favor
of Anita. So too, when she was seven, was her seemingly
foreordained pursuit of gymnastics. She focused on swimming, set
age-group records by 12 and notched an adult American record at
14.

    Nall's mother joshes her about being a time-warp child of
the '60s. She favors tie-dyed shirts and sandals, totes home
crumpled paper to ensure that it is recycled, sleeps on a water
bed and spurns red meat. Unlike Evans, however, Nall gave up
college eligibility to turn pro. She took $30,000 in stipends
from U.S. swimming officials, plus $10,000 for setting two world
records at the team trials. That money is a trickle compared
with what will come if she wins the 100-m and 200-m breaststroke
and adds a gold in the medley relay.

    The most drama is likely to come in the backstroke,
pitting towering Wagstaff (5 ft. 11 in., with men's size 11 1/2
feet) against compact Krisztina Egerszegi (5 ft. 4 in.) of
Hungary. Wagstaff fades at 200 m but is a front runner at 100
m, and the Barcelona race may be the first time a woman swims
that distance in less than a minute.

    Still, grand dame Evans, puppyish Nall and embattled
Wagstaff are likely to be overshadowed by Thompson and Summer
Sanders, each competing in as many as five events. Sanders,
maybe the team's most complete swimmer, is in the 100-m and
200-m butterfly and the 200-m and 400-m individual medley, plus
a possible relay. She is likely to win only twice -- teammate
Crissy Ahmann-Leighton is the fastest active 100-m butterflyer
in the world, and Sanders tends to lose rhythm in the final
freestyle laps of the medleys -- yet she could be somewhere on
the victory podium five times.

    Thompson, who is so tough that she often wrestles male
Olympic swimmer Doug Gjertsen to a standoff, is a favorite at
all the freestyle distances Evans isn't swimming -- the 50 m,
100 m and 200 m -- and will likely join freestyle and medley
relays. She could come close to the tally of her heroine,
Kristin Otto of East Germany, whose six gold medals at Seoul are
a record for a woman in any sport. Thompson's awe at that feat
is tinged with healthy skepticism and a yen for battle. "To take
over from the East Germans would be the ultimate revenge," she
says. "To do, without drugs, what they did with drugs would be
an unreal accomplishment."