Mission Viejo Swim Meet of Champions : With Evans on Sidelines, Martin Edges Anderson in 800 Freestyle

A little more than a year ago, Julie Martin left the Cypress Swim Club and joined the Fullerton Aquatics Sports team because she didn’t want to be the fastest swimmer in the water day in and day out. She didn’t want to be always setting the pace. She wanted someone to chase.

Somebody like, say, Janet Evans.

Martin’s specialties are the 800-meter and the 400-meter freestyle, events in which Evans holds the world records. Apparently the daily chase is paying off.

With Evans keeping herself out of competition Thursday afternoon in the Mission Viejo Swim Meet of Champions, Martin won the 800-meter freestyle title in a close race with Sarah Anderson of the Riverside Aquatics Assn. Martin touched out Anderson, 8 minutes 50.70 seconds to 8:50.99.

Those are not fast times, compared to Evans’ record time of 8:17.12, but they’re not bad for a meet that none of these swimmers were peaking for.

“I’m pleased with that time,” Martin said. “It’s the fastest time I’ve ever gone, unrested. It’s the best time I’ve ever had for the middle of the summer.”

Most of the nearly 800 swimmers at the Mission Viejo International Swim Complex are using this meet as a checkpoint in their training as they aim for the Olympic trials. For Martin, who will be trying to make the Olympic team at both 800 meters and 400 meters, the early returns were encouraging.

Last summer she won the Pan-Am Games title in the 400-meter freestyle, and that was encouraging, too. But that was with the ranking American team competing at the Pan Pacific meet in Australia.

She has been just a tiny bit out of the running for the top spots. But at this point she’s thinking positively. With a little laugh at her understatement, she noted, “Bud (McAllister, who coaches both her and Evans) seems to know what he’s doing in these events. . . . Right now I just want to keep things going the way there are. I think I’m in a pretty strong position.”

The top two women in the 800 will make the Olympic team.

For the men, the 800 is not an Olympic event. But Artur Wojdat of Poland, training with the Mission Viejo Nadadores, still was chagrined to finish second behind Jay Benner of the Husky Swim Club. Benner won it in 8:10.11, followed by Wojdat in 8:11.18 and Marius Podkoscielny in 8:12.33.

Wojdat, who was swimming in the lane next to countryman Podkoscielny, was racing Podkoscielny and did not realize that Benner, one lane over, was in the lead.

“When I saw where (Benner) was, I needed another 10 meters to catch him,” Wojdat said. “But I never like to be second.”

Wojdat, the world record-holder in the 400-meter freestyle, also is going to be busy in the “workout meet.” He’s swimming all of the freestyle events, the 100-meter butterfly and all three relays.

Swim Notes

Rowdy Gaines, gold medalist in the 100-meter freestyle in the 1984 Olympics, is making a comeback at this meet at 29. In trying to meet U.S. Swimming’s eligibility standards, Gaines took out a 90-day bank note to put $100,000 in a trust fund. By putting the money that he had made as a result of his swimming fame into the fund, he should be able to regain amateur status.

That status will not be determined, however, until after this meet, so he will swim “under protest” for lack of a better term. Gaines plans to swim the 50-meter freestyle Saturday and the 100-meter freestyle Sunday. He also is considering the 200 today. The last time he swam a 200 in this pool, in 1982, he set a world record.

The word was that Janet Evans would not make an appearance at the meet Thursday because of final exams, but she showed up during the 800-meter freestyle--one of her three world-record events. And she did a light workout in the warmup pool. Evans said that she will not be swimming the 1,500 until after the Olympics, since it is not an Olympic event for women, but that she will be swimming almost everything else as she seeks a racing edge and a broad base for the 400 individual medley. Evans said that she will swim the 200-meter butterfly and the 400-meter individual medley today, the 200-meter backstroke and the 400-meter freestyle, another of her world-record events, on Saturday, and the 200-meter freestyle, 200-meter breaststroke and 200-meter IM on Sunday. Asked why she is swimming so many events, Evans explained, “It’s a workout meet.”

Amy Shaw of the Mission Viejo Nadadores is recovering from a pulled muscle on the inside of her upper thigh, and so is avoiding the breaststroke kick--even though she’s the American record-holder in the 200-meter breaststroke. Over the next three days, she will swim only freestyle events.