Biondi Has High Hopes for Summer

As spring moves toward summer and swimmers begin measuring their races in meters rather than yards, Matt Biondi is hoping that all that changes for him is the date on the calendar.

A surprise member of America’s gold medal-winning 400-meter freestyle relay team at last year’s Olympics, Biondi had a sensational indoor season.

The 19-year-old sophomore at the University of California set three U.S. records at the NCAA short course championships at Austin, Tex., including the world’s first sub-42 second clocking in the 100-yard freestyle.

At the U.S. Swimming Short Course Championships, Biondi set meet records in the 100-and 200-yard freestyle.

All this from a 6-6 Californian who wasn’t even listed among the 166 swimmers in the media guide for the U.S. Olympic Trials less than a year ago, but who now expects to keep producing record-setting performances.

“I want to be as successful as I have been,” said Biondi, who measures an incredible 80 inches from fingertip to fingertip when his arms are extended to the sides.

Of late, Biondi has been very successful.

At the NCAA indoors, he swam the 100-yard freestyle in 41.87 seconds. World records are not kept on indoor events, but the fastest previous indoor time for the 100 was 42.38 by one of Biondi’s Olympic teammates, Rowdy Gaines.

In addition to the 100, Biondi set an American best of 1:33.22 in the 200 freestyle, and briefly held the U.S. indoor best in the 50 freestyle at 19:32 in the preliminaries before Tom Jager of UCLA lowered the mark to 19.24 in the final.

“I don’t think there has ever been such a performance in the freestyles as what Matt did here,” Pablo Morales, an Olympic teammate of Biondi’s who swims for Stanford, said at the collegiate championships. “It is unbelievable. He has put freestyle to a level it has not been before.”

At the Short Course Championships, Biondi continued his record-setting season with meet bests of 42.32 in the 100 freestyle and 1:33.97 in the 200 free.

“I’m looking forward to this summer and swimming in meters,” he said. “I’ve had a very successful yards season, and, if I can just keep up the same intensity and the same performance, my meters achievements should be equally as good.”

Biondi’s swift arrival on the world class swimming scene was unannounced and unexpected.

In high school at Moraga, Calif., he was recruited by only two major universities, UCLA and Cal. He chose Cal, he said, because he wanted to combine swimming and water polo; so far, he has won two varsity letters in each sport for the Golden Bears.

Biondi qualified as the fourth freestyler on the Olympic team and was to swim the second leg of the 400 relay. But U.S. Coach Don Gambril switched Biondi and Mike Heath in the No. 3-4 spots, hoping that Heath would build a lead for the less-experienced swimmer.

Instead, Biondi dove in the water a half-length behind Australia’s Michael Delaney. But Biondi overtook Delaney and gave Gaines a half-length lead at the top of the final 10-meter leg, and the United States won in world-record time of 3:19.03.

The trip to the Olympics was Biondi’s first to an international meet. But his showing in the Short Course championships won him a spot on the 12-member U.S. team that will swim at Monaco, May 24-27. He’s also looking forward to the World University Games at Kobe, Japan.

“The NCAA was the first big winning meet for me,” he said. “Winning and records were something I hoped to do, but I didn’t think it would come this early.”

Biondi has been continually improving. His best 100 in high school was 45 seconds. Then in his freshman year at Cal it was 44. The 200 dropped from 1:42 to 1:36.56 and then to his American record.