Mission Viejo Swim Meet of Champions : Despite Distractions, Meagher Bests Field
As it turned out, Mary T. Meagher was more concerned about finishing the race with at least her swimsuit still in place than winning.
Her goggles came off when she dived in the pool, she had to adjust her cap on the first turn and later admitted that “even this suit is real questionable.”
It takes more than a few distractions to stop the 200-meter butterfly world record holder in her specialty, though, and Friday at the Mission Viejo Swim Meet of Champions was a case in point. Meagher’s 2:12.42 in the Marguerite Swim Complex pool was almost seven seconds off her world mark, but it was still nearly five seconds faster than the rest of the field.
“I was pleasantly surprised with the time,” Meagher said. “It was faster than I expected. I felt good in the morning but only went 2:16.
“Then my goggles came down on the dive so I had to reach up and flip them off. I don’t think that’s ever happened with these goggles before. On the first turn, I had to pull the flap of my cap down over my ear ‘cause it was bugging me.
“Then I started wondering about this suit,” she said, pulling on a shoulder strap and smiling.
Meagher, an always-candid veteran at 21, admits that she gets “sick of swimming” at times and said her first thought was to use the equipment problems as an excuse. But then she had a change of heart and, as usual, left everyone else in her wake.
Meagher, who won gold medals in both butterfly events and the medley relay in the 1984 Olympics, is setting her sights on the World Championships in Madrid this summer. She’s one of the few American swimmers who is considered a shoo-in for the the U.S. team and can virtually look past the World Championships Trials next month in Orlando, Fla.
One of Meagher’s teammates at Cal, Conny Van Bentum of the Netherlands, is another swimmer who can start packing for Madrid. Van Bentum, who will return home to finish her medical education, was the first double winner of the meet, capturing the 200-meter freestyle and the 50-meter freestyle.
Van Bentum’s 2:01.59 in the 200 was almost three seconds ahead of second-place Meagher (2:04.46) and her time in the 50 (26.55) was less than a second off Dara Torres’ world record (25.61).
“I feel really good because I’ve been working very hard and I’m very tired,” Van Bentum said. “I did not expect these times at all. I just wanted to use this meet to get back into long-course (swimming).”
Van Bentum was a member of the Netherlands’ sliver-medal 400-meter freestyle relay team and finished fourth in the 100-meter freestyle in the ’84 Games.
“I had a great time at the Olympics, but I was very disappointed with my times,” she said. “I would like to try for ‘88, but going back and forth between med school and training is hard. I know. I did it in ’84.”
Van Bentum’s Olympic experience was a party compared to Newport Beach’s John Moffet’s. Moffet pulled a groin muscle in the preliminary heats of the 100-meter breaststroke, swam with a bandage in the finals after receiving an injection and finished fifth. He was forced to scratch from the 200-meter race.
Friday, Moffet won the 100-meter breaststroke in 1:06.22. It was almost five seconds slower than Steve Lundquist’s world record, but it was a step toward Moffet’s goal: the 1988 Olympics.
“It took me about five months to get better physically and nine months to get over the emotional damage,” Moffet said. “But barring anything unforeseen, I’ll be training for ’88.
“The older you get, the more sacrifices you have to make to do something like train for the Olympics. I’m a senior (at Stanford) and I have to decide where to train and how to make a living. There’s not a lot of money in swimming.”
That never bothered Mark Kerry, 26, a professional model from Australia who lives in Los Angeles. He makes a nice living both here and Down Under about three out of every four years and then gets ready for another Olympics. He has competed for Australia in the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Games.
Kerry, who’s been training for just five weeks, decided he’d like to represent his homeland in the World Championships this summer and it didn’t take him long to get ready. He won the 100-meter backstroke in 58.42 Friday.
In other events Friday, Artur Wojdat, a 17-year-old from Poland who trains at Mission Viejo, won the 200-meter freestyle in 1:52.55; Portland’s Michelle Donahue won the 100-meter backstroke in 1:07.02; Kathy Smith of Kirkland, Wash., captured the 100-meter breaststroke (1:13.15); Canada’s Cerny Vlastimil won the 200-meter butterfly in 2:03.46, and Cal’s Matt Biondi, the world record holder in the 100-meter freestyle, took the 50-meter freestyle in 23.63.