U.S. Olympic Festival : Louganis Might Be Getting Older, but He Also May Be Getting Better

One of the first things people notice about Greg Louganis these days is that his hair, once jet black, is beginning to turn gray. He would like to be able to say he had the makeup department dye it for his next commercial, but that would be false advertising.

It is not only because of Louganis’ premature gray that other divers, some of whom already call him Grandpa, were beginning to wonder last April if age was beginning to overtake him. He is, after all, 27.

At the Phillips 66/U.S. indoor diving championships in Baton Rouge, La., Louganis, who had won 41 national titles since 1975, including every one since 1984, lost not once but three times, finishing second in the one-meter and three-meter springboard and 10-meter platform finals.

Lost, of course, is not the word Louganis would choose.

“I was second,” he said last week before diving competition began in the U.S. Olympic Festival. “I don’t consider that losing.”

Whatever, it appears as if it were a temporary condition.

Louganis has not lost, or finished anything other than first, since, including his victory in the three-meter finals one week after the U.S. indoors at the prestigious FINA World Cup in Amersfoort, Holland.

Over the weekend, Louganis, competing in his seventh Olympic Festival, won both the three-meter and platform championships at the Candler Swim Club.

In the three-meter competition Saturday, Louganis scored six perfect 10s out of a possible seven on his final dive to finish with 703.86 points. Kent Ferguson, who beat Louganis in the event in Baton Rouge, was second with 643.44 points.

On Sunday, Louganis needed near perfection on his final dive from the platform, a reverse 3 1/2 somersault in the tuck position, to hold his lead over longtime rival Bruce Kimball. No problem. Louganis scored three 10s and finished with 664.59 points to 632.16 for runner-up Kimball. It was Louganis’ 13th Festival medal since 1979, his 12th gold.

“In retrospect, I realized that it was OK what happened in Baton Rouge,” said Louganis, who has a home in Malibu but trains most of the year in Mission Bay, Fla.

“The first final we had was the one-meter. When I finished second, I just passed it off as no big deal. The one-meter doesn’t count from an international standpoint.

“The thing that bothered me was the way people reacted. They started saying, ‘You’re getting old.’ I started thinking maybe they were right, doubting myself. That had an adverse affect on the way I performed the rest of the meet.

“You can’t have those kind of doubts in a national championship. It was a difficult time for me, but it’s something I’m glad I went through. It really tested my commitment to continue to dive.”

As soon as he left the pool after the 10-meter competition, Louganis found his coach, Ron O’Brien, and said he wanted to train 10 months this year in Mission Bay instead of the seven months he had planned.

O’Brien, who coached Louganis at Mission Viejo before they moved to Mission Bay, said Louganis is physically and technically as good as ever, but had begun to lose his concentration before the Baton Rouge meet.

“Greg is just as strong and just as elegant as he ever was,” O’Brien said. “But when the pressure is really on, a diver has to rely on his training.”

If Louganis regains the intensity that enabled him to win gold medals in the three-meter and platform at the 1984 Summer Olympics, and it appears as if he is close, the other divers no doubt will feel as if they again are competing for silver medals.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t consider myself old,” Louganis said. “Dr. Sammy Lee was 32 when he won his last Olympic medal. Klaus DiBiasi was 29 in Montreal in 1976. I was the whippersnapper at 16, and he won the gold medal. Experience means a lot in our sport.”

But there is little question that the only gold some of the other divers would like to see Louganis get is on a watch.

“When Greg announced he would stick around until ’88 and not retire, a lot of guys reacted like, ‘Oh no, that’s one spot (on the Olympic team) that I was shooting for,”’ Ferguson said.

Kimball said he has mixed emotions about competing against Louganis.

“You don’t judge yourself on losing to Louganis,” said Kimball, probably the most competitive of the divers and someone who does feel as if he has lost when he finishes second. “It’s no shame losing to the best in history.”

But Kimball, who is from Ann Arbor, Mich., added that one reason it is so difficult to beat Louganis is because of the reputation he has established with judges.

“After all, he is Greg Louganis,” Kimball said. “You’re not only fighting what he does on that day, but what he has done in the past.”

Louganis, however, does not argue with Kimball’s next statement.

“He gives you something to shoot at,” said Kimball, who has finished second to Louganis five times in platform competition at the Festival. “It pulls the whole diving group together. It might not be your day, but it might be somebody else’s. You cheer for them to beat him. Everybody’s an underdog. When he can be beat, we like to see it happen.”

Kimball said Louganis shouldn’t take it personally.

He doesn’t.

“I’ve kind of set myself up for that because I’ve had so much success,” he said. “Sometimes when I’m out there, I feel like I’m on my own. It’s difficult sometimes.”

But he has discovered a way to deal with the isolation.

“I tell myself that no matter what happens, my mother’s still going to love me,” he said.

Louganis almost retired following the 1984 Olympics to concentrate on his acting and dancing career. He made commercials and one movie, playing a womanizing beach bum in “Dirty Laundry,” which has yet to be released.

“That may be a blessing,” he said.

He will make his professional dance debut next October in Indianapolis. “I’ve been dancing since I was 3, but this is the first time I’m going to be paid for it,” he said.

While on the subject of money, when the international diving federation decided athletes could accept payments toward their training expenses, depositing the rest in trust funds that will be available to them upon retirement, Louganis decided he could afford to remain in the sport.

He said, however, that was not the motivation for postponing his retirement until after the 1988 Summer Olympics.

“I didn’t know what I would be doing after the 1984 Games, but I kept going to the pool because I wanted to stay in shape for exhibitions,” he said. “It was the first time I had been there just because I wanted to be. I hadn’t realized before how much I enjoyed it.”

But while he said he once was obsessed with diving, his acting career now is equally important. Endorsements would be nice. Are you listening, Grecian Formula?