Sarah Anderson Is First With Most : Californian Sets Olympic Festival Record With Six Gold Medals

Just as most of the 3,000 athletes competing in the U.S. Olympic Festival were saying hello to North Carolina Friday night, Sarah Anderson was saying goodby.

In a unique twist, the Festival had its opening ceremony at Carter-Finley Stadium on the North Carolina State campus five days after the opening of competition.

But that was fine with Anderson, 17, who used the occasion to celebrate the six gold medals she won this week in swimming competition at the University of North Carolina’s Koury Natatorium in Chapel Hill. No one else has ever won as many gold medals in a single Festival.

Anderson, who will return to her home today in Moreno Valley, Calif., said she would have celebrated after her final event Thursday night except that it took her too long to complete the requirement for drug testing, which was a new experience for her.

So was appearing in front of a room full of reporters at a press conference Friday in Durham.

She obviously was less comfortable than she had been in the pool Thursday night, when she came from about 10 meters behind on the anchor leg of the 400-meter medley relay to overtake Marilyn Peck and win a sixth gold medal.

Only 20 minutes earlier, she had won her fifth in the 400-meter freestyle race. Although she had committed to an interview between her races with ESPN, which is televising the Festival, she had to postpone it while trainers massaged out the soreness in her legs so she could swim the relay.

“During the relay, I realized I could set the record with six gold medals,” she said. “It was something I wanted to do, something no one had done before. I told myself, ‘I can do it, I can catch her.’ ”

Anderson caught Peck 50 meters from the finish and matched strokes with her until the final 10 meters, finally pulling ahead to win by about three-quarters of a second.

On the first two nights of competition, Anderson also was a member of winning 400-meter freestyle and 800-meter freestyle relay teams and won individual gold medals in the 200 and 800 freestyle races. Her time of 2:03.67 in the 200 set a Festival record. She had personal bests in all three of her individual events.

“If someone had told me before I got here that I would win six gold medals, I wouldn’t have believed them,” said Anderson, who has trained for the last five years at the Riverside Aquatic Club in a pool named for one of the nation’s best swimmers, Sippy Woodhead.

Woodhead also won six times in the 1979 Festival at Colorado Springs but received only five gold medals because she scored one of her victories in a non-Olympic event.

While Anderson was the most celebrated swimmer here, the most frustrated was Sheri Smith of Hacienda Heights. She finished second to Anderson in the 200, 400 and 800 freestyles.

“If anyone else is going to win, I’d like it to be Sarah,” Smith said. “I would have liked to have won one , though.”

Their rivalry is likely to continue next year when both are college freshmen, Smith at UCLA and Anderson at California. Anderson, who graduated from Moreno Valley High School last month, said she plans to major in chemical engineering.

As for the rest of the summer, she said she will concentrate on the Senior National Championships July 27-31 at Clovis, Calif.

The first two finishers in each event there will represent the United States in the Pan-Pacific Games next month at Brisbane, Australia, while the next two finishers will compete in the Pan American Games at the same time in Indianapolis.

“After this meet, I’m thinking I can make one of those teams,” Anderson said. “Before, I said I would like to be in the top eight. I was swimming here without being shaved and tapered and completely rested. So I’m thinking now I can finish in the top four there.

“I really have to concentrate now. This meet is behind me. I have to go faster in the next meet.”