U.S. Swimming Long Course Championships Notebook : Nothing Is Second-Rate About Pan Am Team

Minutes after the Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming National Long Course Championships had ended, Skip Kenney had in his hand a list of the swimmers he’ll be coaching in the Pan American Games at Indianapolis starting next weekend.

“I’ll tell you one of the main reasons that I’m pleased with this team--because I see enthusiastic people,” Kenney said. “There might be some feelings of disappointment in some of these swimmers now, because they’re competitors. But no disappointment that will last.

“We may be sending our big-name swimmers to Australia, but we’re sending our heroes to Indianapolis. These are the swimmers who will be wearing USA in front of an American crowd.

“My hope and my dream for this team is to develop the kind of team chemistry that will come across as a U.S. Swimming team should, not just for us, and the fans, but for live TV.”

No B team attitude.

Or as Ray Essick, executive director of U.S. Swimming, said: “We are competing with two U.S. teams this summer. Not a first team and a second team. Not an A team and a B team.”

There is no getting around the fact that U.S. Swimming signed a contract that promised to send the top team to Australia for the Pan Pacific meet Aug. 13-15. And there is no getting around the fact that in the selection meet held at Clovis, Calif., last week, the top finishers were seeded onto the Pan Pacific team and the runners-up onto the Pan American team.

But it is also worth noting that the team going to the Pan Pacific meet isn’t the best team this country can muster. Mary T. Meagher, who holds the world records in both the 100- and 200-meter butterfly events, is taking the summer off before starting to train for the Olympics. Betsy Mitchell, the world record-holder in the 200-meter backstroke, qualified for the Pan Pacific meet but is skipping it to rest before starting her Olympic training.

John Moffett, a member of the 1984 Olympic team, is still working his way back from an injury and didn’t qualify to go to Australia.

Many U.S. swimmers are looking toward the 1988 Olympic Games.

Even the stars of the Pan Pacific team, such as world record-holders Matt Biondi and Janet Evans, are scheduling some rest this season. Biondi took a break before the meet at Clovis, and Evans plans a break after getting back from Australia.

Richard Quick, the U.S. coach for the Pan Pacific meet and through the Olympics, admits that things would have been different if the Pan American Games had been awarded to Indianapolis before the Pan Pacific contract was signed.

An advantage to competing with two teams this summer--in addition to the unstated financial gains from the Pan Pacific Games--will be many more young swimmers can experience international competition before the Olympic year.

To recap how U.S. Swimming came to snub the Pan American Games in its own country:

The United States competed in the Pan Pacific meets at Tokyo in 1979, at Tokyo in ’83 and again at Tokyo in ’85. But there was never a flap about it because the only year the Pan Pacific meet coincided with the Pan American Games was in ‘83, when the U.S. sent its top team to Caracas for the Pan Am.

Actually, there probably wouldn’t be much concern this time around if the Pan American Games were being held in Ecuador or Chile, as was expected at the time that U.S. Swimming entered into the contract with Japan, Australia, and Canada to send top teams to the Pan Pacific meet. That was in December of ’84.

Essick insists that the main consideration was level of competition.

“We tried to be included in the European Championships, but, of course, that was out of the question. We aren’t Europeans,” he said. “But we weren’t getting enough competition to improve. That is not to say that there were no good swimmers. But overall, it wasn’t what we were looking for. And that is not to put down the whole Pan Am Games. Our boxers, for example, get some very good competition.

“We just needed to create a better meet.”

Essick said he had figured out the last Pan American Games swimming events, using the times of the third- and fourth-place finishers in the qualifying meet, and the United States would have lost only two medals if it had sent a B team then.

Jens-Peter Berndt, who defected from East Germany in January 1985 and was hoping to get Congress to grant him accelerated citizenship in time to compete for the United States in the 1988 Olympics, has had offers of immediate citizenship from Canada, Australia and West Germany. It would be quite a coup for West Germany to have him on their team, competing against the East Germans. Michael Gross of West Germany has even talked with Berndt about it.

But Berndt, who attends the University of Alabama and swims for the Mission Bay Makos, is holding out for American citizenship. He says being an American is more important than the Olympics.

Berndt swam a 2:01.53 in the 200-meter backstroke at Clovis, the fastest time in the world this year. His time would have won the event if he hadn’t been bumped into the consolation final. Scott Johnson won the race in 2:01.68.

On the times at the national long course meet: The pool at Clovis is fast. Like the Olympic pool at USC and the pool at the University of Texas, it is uniformly deep. Clovis is 8 feet all the way. The fast pools have wide lanes and deep gutters, causing reduced turbulence.

But those factors should figure more in the sprints, and the two world records set at the meet were in distance events, by Janet Evans.

Also, many of the times recorded last week ranked among the best in the world this year. Those times will be hung up as goals in the European Championships, which will be held after the Pan American Games and the Pan Pacific meet.

Rowdy Gaines, an Olympic gold medalist in 1984, has been doing public relations for swimming and coaching an age-group team in Las Vegas since the last Games. But he has been talking about a comeback. No one at U.S. Swimming is taking him seriously, but he says he’s swimming every day and starting to take it seriously, himself. At Clovis, he was wearing a T-shirt from the Hagler-Leonard fight and said, “When I went to this fight, I really wanted Sugar Ray to win, but I didn’t think he would. I said, ‘If Sugar Ray can come back and win, then I can, too.’ I’ve been thinking about it since then. It’s hard for an athlete to say die.”

Gaines, who will be 29 in February, is a sprinter, so it’s not out of the question that he could get back. But he would have trouble with the rules on amateurism, because he did not put all of the money he has made into a trust fund. “Who knows? Maybe I should get an attorney and starting looking into it,” he said.