Evans Relieved After Incredible Week : Swimmer Is Happy but Tired in Wake of Two World Records

After a week of victories, records, medals, cheering fans, autograph-seekers, press conferences, TV interviews and dozens of roses, Janet Evans of Placentia was glad it was over.

Oh, sure, it was fun. But she was tired. Especially after setting the world record in the 1,500-meter freestyle Friday night at the Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming Long Course National Championships in Clovis. She had set the world record for the 800-meter freestyle on Monday.

Asked for a comment on her second world record of the week, she looked up at the horde of reporters and the three camera crews packed into a trailer behind the pool and said, quietly: “I worked hard for it. I’m glad it’s all over with. It’s been a really long week.”

And today she flies with the U.S. team to the Pan Pacific Games in Brisbane, Australia.

After the Pan Pacifics, she’ll take some time off, which will include celebrating her 16th birthday on Aug. 28. She’ll return to classes at El Dorado High School on Sept. 9, and will then begin training for the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

Because of Evans’ work ethic and attitude, it’s not likely she’ll burn out despite having accomplished so much, says Bud McAllister, her coach on the Fullerton Aquatics Swim Team.

McAllister is not having her train at a punishing pace. American swimmers a few years ago were swimming 25,000 meters a day. Evans goes about 13,000, concentrating on intensity instead of distance.

McAllister says she is as consistent in workouts as she is in races.

In setting the world record in the 1,500, Evans swam the first 100 in 1 minute, 1.6 seconds. She then settled into a pace of about 1:04 every 100 meters. She slowed ever so slightly in the middle, with a couple of splits nearing 1:05, but then she got back on pace and finished with a 100 under 1:04.

Her total time of 16:00.73 broke the record set by Kim Linehan at 16:04.49 almost eight years earlier.

McAllister had set her up for a pace that would put her under 16 minutes, knowing that if she faltered, as she did a little bit in the middle, she’d still get the world record.

Evans had been saying all week that the 1,500 was her best event. But she clarified that as she tried to tell folks who had worked up a sweat just logging her splits for that very intense 16 minutes: “It’s my best event, not my favorite. Swimming a mile really hurts.”

Well, everyone else at the Clovis West High School complex enjoyed it. And Evans said, flashing a big smile, “It was exhilarating. Also really, really tiring. But, yes, exhilarating.”

Evans had set the world record in the 800-meter freestyle (8:22.44) on the first night of the meet. And she also won the 400-meter freestyle and the 400-meter individual medley.

She is the first swimmer since Tracy Caulkins in 1981 to win four events in the long course national meet. That’s not the first thing she has done to draw a comparison to Caulkins, and it won’t be the last.

Evans not only has the athletic potential to be what Caulkins was to American swimming, she also has the easy, candid, sweet disposition to win hearts the way Caulkins did.

Richard Quick, the women’s swim coach at the University of Texas and the national team coach through the 1988 Olympics, didn’t have to be asked twice what he liked most about the qualifying meet: “I’d say Janet Evans is the most exciting thing. She’s new in new events for us. She’s what we’ve been looking for.”

In summarizing the state of U.S. swimming going into the Olympic year, Quick said: “In women’s swimming, with the emergence of some new, young swimmers, Janet Evans in particular, along with what I know about some others--like Betsy Mitchell and Mary T. Meagher and Jenna Johnson--I think we are in an improving position against the East Germans.”