No Ferrys, No Problem : Away From Balboa Traffic, Kayak Foursome Should Dominate at Festival

There is far less hubbub and commotion here on Lake Wheeler than on the busy waters of Newport Harbor, where kayakers Sharon Attlesey, Shirley Dery-Batlik, Sheila Conover and JoJo Toeppner usually train.

At home in California, they must make their way among clots of pleasure craft and contend with the drivers of the Balboa ferry. They have a friendly and tacit agreement with some of the drivers: When one of the kayaks is sprinting, the ferry will pause in deference to their training, but if the kayak is merely cruising, the ferry continues on.

By most accounts, there will be far less competition here on the quiet man-made lake where the U.S. Olympic Festival canoe and kayak competition will be held today and Sunday, miles from anything more than a two-lane highway. Neither revelers nor other competitors are expected to get in the way of their four-person kayak, nor much is expected to hinder successes in singles (K-1) or doubles (K-2) competition.

Conover, 24, a 1984 Olympian, won three gold medals at the 1986 festival, winning the K-1, teaming with Toeppner to win the K-2, and helping a K-4 team to a festival-record 1 minute 48.16 second- victory in the K-4.

Conover, Dery-Batlik (also a 1984 Olympian) and Toeppner have been on the festival gold-medal K-4 team the past two years. This year, they added Attlesey, 21. Toeppner, 33, still has the festival record in the K-1 (2:03.75), a mark she set when she won the gold in 1985. “This group will pretty well wipe out the women’s competition,” said Tom Johnson, the West team coach, a retired Los Angeles fireman who lives in Kernville, Calif.

Beyond the usual competitive advantages such as ability, strength and dedication, these women train together year-round at Newport Harbor in what has become a de facto training center for the women’s U.S. national team.

All four paddlers on the West team’s K-4 boat are on the six-member national team, and a fifth national team member--Traci Phillips of Costa Mesa--trains with them, but is not competing in the festival.

Kirsten Conklin, a 1987 graduate of Newport Harbor High School who is not on the national team but will compete here in K-1 and K-2, also trains at Newport Harbor.

Because canoers and kayakers are chosen for the festival--and, ultimately, the Olympics--by competition in singles and doubles rather than in foursomes, the other teams will field K-4 boats that have not paddled together before the festival.

The West team K-4, however, has trained together since after the 1984 Summer Olympics. Three of them were born in Newport Beach and went to Newport Harbor High School. The fourth, Dery-Batlik, now lives in Costa Mesa with her husband, Jirka Batlik, who is competing in singles canoe races here and who in 1983 set the festival record in the event (2:05.29).

So nearly complete is this unofficial training center that Laszlo Urogi, a Hungarian coach whose pupils have won 14 world championships in 13 years and who has won three himself, has been coaching the women since April as part of an international coaching exchange funded by the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Urogi has gained high esteem in the eyes of these women, who say they cannot find a coach of his caliber in the U.S. and want him to remain through 1988.

One thing seems certain--he will keep them hard at work.

Later, while the women joke about the lengths of their winter breaks--during which they lift weights, run sprints, swim and ski, but do not paddle--Urogi shakes his head.

“Rest,” he says in Hungarian, “is for the cemetery.” The length of Urogi’s stay at Newport Harbor is uncertain because the USOC grant is not sufficient after Hungarian taxes to secure housing in Newport Beach for Urogi and his wife and two children, who are to join him this month.

He would like to stay--he said through Dery-Batlik, 25, who was born in the U.S. but spent five years in Hungary and serves as his interpreter--because he wants to see the U.S. women “go well in ’88.”

In the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Conover and Batlik were in the U.S. K-4 boat that finished fourth, barely missing the bronze medal. But that was the year of the Eastern Bloc boycott, and Urogi’s hope for 1988 is that the U.S. may finish sixth.

Still, he has confidence in these women, who have no small amount of Olympic experience in their families. Dery-Batlik’s father was a gymnast on a Hungarian Olympic team, and Attlesey’s sister Kim was a long jumper on the 1972 U.S. Olympic team. Her father, Dick Attlesey, for 10 years was the world record-holder in the 110-yard high hurdles.

Right now, the greatest concern of these women is finding a way to keep Urogi as their coach.

When someone wonders what Urogi will do if he does not find affordable housing, Dery-Batlik, instead of posing the question, answers for him: “That can’t happen.”

Festival Notes

Today is the first full-schedule day of the festival. Competition begins in archery, baseball, basketball, boxing, canoeing and kayaking, figure skating, judo, roller skating, shooting, soccer, softball, table tennis, tennis and volleyball . . . Karla Goltman of the Mission Viejo Nadadores and UCLA, who finished sixth in the women’s springboard preliminaries Thursday, will compete in the springboard finals today, as will Jeff Symons of Ames, Iowa, and the Nadadores, who finished 12th in the men’s springboard preliminaries Thursday . . . David Pichler, of Butler, Pa., and the Nadadores, did not advance to the finals in either event.