U.S. Swimming Long Course Championships : Evans Has Broken a Record but Made a Friend

When Janet Evans gets to Australia for the Pan Pacific Games in a couple of weeks, she’ll swim the 800-meter freestyle, the 400-meter freestyle and the 400-meter individual medley. And she’ll have lunch with Tracey Wickham, who until Monday night was the world record-holder in the 800.

After winning the 400-meter freestyle Thursday evening at the Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming Long Course Championships, and finishing just a couple of seconds off Wickham’s world record in that event, Evans told about her phone call from Australia the night before.

“It was neat talking to her,” Evans said. “I think that’s when it dawned on me what I did.”

The rest of the world was duly impressed Monday night when Evans, a not-quite-16-year-old from Placentia, broke swimming’s oldest existing world record. It certainly hit Wickham hard when she heard about it.

“She told me that when she first found out, she was kind of sad,” Evans said. “She told me she said a couple of words she couldn’t repeat, and then she cried a little. And she told me that now she has to think of it as the 800 instead of her 800.

“And then she told me she’d be there at the Pan Pacific Games, and we could go to lunch.”

Evans seemed to have no trouble, though, realizing what she had done when she won her third event Thursday night. She beat the American record-holder, Tiffany Cohen, a swimmer she has long looked up to.

Evans remembers watching Cohen win the Olympic gold medal in this event and also the 800 in 1984. And she remembers climbing out of a warmup pool in 1985 and getting the feeling that Cohen and another Mission Viejo swimmer were “snickering” at her.

Evans does have a funny-looking kind of stroke, a rapid-fire, straight-armed churning that does conjure up visions of a bathtub windup toy.

But no one is snickering now.

Cohen says everyone has to adapt stroke to physique and strength, adding that she, herself, used to “turn it over” pretty fast when she was smaller.

At this point, Cohen has nothing but respect for the little girl from the Fullerton club. “I’m not disappointed at all to finish second to her,” Cohen said. “This was my best time in three years. I hurt my shoulder in December, and I’m still trying to get back on schedule. . . .

“Watching Janet in the 800 on the first night, that really got me going. It’s about time that 800 world record was broken. I tried to get it in ‘84, but I was a little off.”

Cohen, who will be a senior at the University of Texas in the fall, has come home to Culver City for the summer and is swimming now for Irvine Nova.

She didn’t go back to her old club, Mission Viejo, she said, because the same people aren’t there, and it just wouldn’t be the same.

Cohen was hoping to make the Pan Am team. Making the Pan Pacific team is a bonus.

Evans’ time of 4:08.89 did not break Wickham’s world record of 4:06.28 or Cohen’s American record of 4:07.10. But she’ll certainly be within striking distance when she and Cohen (who was second in 4:10.76) hit the water in Brisbane.

Evans’ world record on the first night still stands as the only world record of this meet.

Matt Biondi won the 50-meter freestyle Thursday in 22.33 seconds, which ties the time he set as a world record at the World Championship trials last summer in Orlando, Fla.

That is, it’s a world record in the opinion of everybody except the folks on the International Swimming Federation. They contend that because the time was set after it had been decided that the 50 would be an international event but before it was actually contested in an international meet, it must be called a world best.

FINA decided that the world standard should be set at 1/100th of a second faster than the best ever for the international 50-meter race, which was held in Madrid last summer.

So FINA would call Biondi’s time a world best, not a world record.

Tom Jager, who was the first to set a world best/record after it was decided the 50 would be an international event, says that’s crazy. “If Matt’s the fastest man in the world in the event, he’s the world record-holder as far as I’m concerned. . . . How can there be a world record that nobody’s ever done?”

Jager was just happy to finish second and make the Pan Pacific team. His UCLA coach, Ron Ballatore, was the first to shake his hand after the race. Jager said: “He was thanking me for putting him on the coaching staff for Australia.”

Biondi was asked if he thought his 22:33 should be called a world best or a world record. He concluded: “I’d call it a hell of a swim.”

And he figures it’s not worth arguing about because before anyone could win, that standard of 22:32 will be long since replaced by an even lower world record that all can agree on.

In the women’s 50, Lisa Dorman won the final heat in 26.14 seconds. Dara Torres and Anna Pettis Scott tied for second at 26:02, forcing a swim-off for the berth on the Pan Pacific team. Scott won the head-to-head competition.

In the men’s 200-meter individual medley, Dave Wharton became a double winner by beating American record-holder Pablo Morales. Morales’ world record held up but Wharton set a meet record with his 2:02.76.

The Mission Bay Makos lead both the men’s and women’s team standings and have the overall lead going into today’s final races.