Swimming / Tracy Dodds : He Has Beaten Drugs; Now, He Takes On World

Steve Bentley, who swims for USC during the school year and for the Golden West Swim Club during the summer, was one of the biggest surprises in the recent U.S. Swimming World Championship trials at Orlando, Fla.

A newcomer to the elite level, Bentley won both the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke titles to earn his first trip abroad as a member of an American team. The World Championships are Aug. 13-23 at Madrid.

Bentley also surprised a lot of people by saying publicly that his quick rise to the top began only after he successly overcame alcohol and drug problems.

“I really didn’t plan to talk about this, but I guess the word is getting out, and I’m not going to duck the subject,” he said. “I worked with a sports psychologist (Dr. Ken Fineman) to get over problems with alcohol and drugs--mostly cocaine. It was my dad’s idea not to go to a rehabilitation center but to relate my rehabilitation to my sport. He knew that would work because swimming meant so much to me.”

Bentley was not highly recruited at Fountain Valley High School. He went to UC Santa Barbara, where he swam seriously but where he also got involved with cocaine. He flunked out of school after the first semester.

He came home to swim with the Golden West Swim Club, and with the help of the club’s coaches and his father, he faced the problems caused by his drug use. Free of the drugs, his swimming times improved and he was offered a full scholarship to Nebraska and a partial scholarship to USC. He chose USC.

Then, in his first semester at USC, Bentley came down with pneumonia. But he said he was so adamant about staying away from drugs--of any kind--that he even refused antibiotics, so it took him a long time to recover.

“One of the reasons I’m willing to talk about this now, even though I’m afraid my dad might not like this coming out, is that I think communication is important,” Bentley said. “Now we’re starting to hear about things like the death of Len Bias to know how serious it is. You didn’t hear much about it a few years ago.

“If I had known then what I know now about drugs, I never would have tried it in the first place.”

Bentley said that his success at the World Championship trials has given him a lot more confidence in his swimming. “I’m on top now,” he said. “I feel like a success.”

His best event is the 200-meter breaststroke because, he explained, he has a stroke more conducive to the longer race. He had finished second in the 200-yard breaststroke at the NCAA meet but was 14th in the 100. He wanted the American record of 2 minutes 15.38 seconds in the 200 meters at the trials, but he won the race in 2:16.42. At least, now he knows that the record is within reach.

But the biggest surprise, to Bentley as well as anyone else, was his time of 1:03.43 in the 100-meter breaststroke. A few weeks earlier, he had finished third in that event at the Mission Viejo meet with a time of 1:07.14--and had said he was pleased with that.

“I’m really excited now,” Bentley said. “This meet really helped my confidence, and I’m looking forward to the World Championships. I feel like I’m going to get a lot better now that I’m swimming year-round, and now that I know I can do it.”

Swimming Notes

Swimmers representing the United States during the Goodwill Games in the Soviet Union are not the nation’s elite. The team was selected at the U.S. Swimming World Championship trials last week, from among the best swimmers available after the 40-member World Championship team had been filled. . . . The Goodwill Games swimmers went to Moscow directly from Orlando. The World Championship team swimmers returned to their home clubs to prepare for the trip to Madrid in August. The United States made a disappointing showing in the 1982 World Championships at Guayaquil, Ecuador. That was blamed on a very short time between trials and competition. Under the new schedule, the Americans have seven weeks to train. . . . Matt Biondi of Cal, who set the world record in the 50- and 100-meter freestyles, and Pablo Morales of Stanford, who set the world record in the 100-meter butterfly during the trials at the Justus Aquatic Center, which adjoins the Radisson Hotel, both had suites in the hotel named after them. . . . Debbie Babashoff, the youngest sister of 1976 Olympic stars Jack and Shirley Babashoff, made an excellent showing at the trials. Debbie, who swims for Mission Viejo, qualified for the World Championships in three events--the 400- and 800-meter freestyles and the 800-meter freestyle relay. . . Rick Carey, the ’84 Olympic gold medalist in both the 100- and 200-meter backstrokes, skipped the trials and, therefore, is skipping the World Championships. His coach, John Collins, told reporters in Orlando: “Rick doesn’t like to get beat. It’s like he has a nervous breakdown every time he gets beat. He got beat three out of four times by foreign swimmers this winter, and he’s lost his confidence. But he talks as if he’s coming back.” . . . Carrie Steinseifer, the co-gold medalist in the 100-meter freestyle in the ’84 Olympics, skipped the trials to attend her high school graduation. She’ll be a freshman at Texas this fall. . . . Tom Jager of UCLA, who lost his world record to Biondi in the 50-meter freestyle and also finished second to Biondi in the 100-meter freestyle, will have another chance in Madrid in both events. . . . Tiffany Cohen, the American record-holder and Olympic gold medalist in the 400- and 800-meter freestyles, was looking forward to meeting East Germany’s Astrid Strauss after losing to Strauss in the 400 in their last two meetings. But Cohen didn’t qualify for either event. . . . In another major upset, Erika Hansen, who was ranked No. 1 in the world in the 400-meter individual medley and who also was ranked in the 200-meter IM, did not make the team. . . .John Moffett, formerly of Newport Harbor High School and Stanford, who was ranked No. 1 in the world in the 100-meter breaststroke, finished fourth in that event at the trials when he injured his leg in the last few meters. The leg was still bothering him at the time of the 200-meter breaststroke, and he did not qualify for the World Championships. It was a blow reminiscent of the ’84 Olympics, in which he went in with the world record in the 100 but pulled a groin muscle in a preliminary heat and didn’t win a medal. Jeff Dimond, of the federation U.S. Swimming, said: “It’s one of the great tragedies. What a great champion he has been. He’s the kind of guy you want representing us everywhere. Now he’s not competing this summer.” Moffett will go to Oxford to continue his studies. . . . Betsy Mitchell of the University of Texas, the only American woman to beat an East German in a backstroke event since 1978, set the American record in the 100-meter backstroke and the world record in the 200 meters at the trials. She also won the 200-meter freestyle. But Richard Quick, the coach at Texas and also the U.S. coach for the world championships, has said that Mitchell might not swim the freestyle at Madrid. He might leave that to second-place finisher Mary T. Meagher and third-place finisher Mary Wayte, the Olympic gold medalist in that event in 1984.