Gaines, No Longer Wet Behind the Ears, Joins Olympic Chase

There must be some mistake. Rowdy Gaines in a swim meet? Lanky, chlorine-blond, self-effacing Rowdy Gaines? The same guy who was last seen winning gold medals in the 1984 Summer Games? Who now tips the calendar at 29? That Rowdy Gaines?

I thought he was through with flip turns and foggy goggles and kickboards. I thought he was a working stiff like the rest of us, not still part of the wet set. And isn’t there a Tarzan movie somewhere that needs a nice freestyler for the river scene?

But here is Gaines, swimming again. And not just in any meet, but the Mission Viejo Swim Meet of Champions, where the average age of the human fish is between junior prom and rush week, where heat times are only slightly more important than the name of a good orthodontist. For some of these swimmers, this isn’t a meet, but day care.

Not only that, but this place is Australian crawling with swim pedigree. Matt Biondi . . . Janet Evans . . . Tom Jager, to name a few. And many of them have parent permission slips and their own driver’s licenses, too.

Which brings us to Gaines, a museum piece if there ever was one. Someone ought to tell him that you don’t jump back into a pool at 29; you sit by one, sipping on cool beverages, developing a pot belly to be proud of. The only laps you do are with the pool vacuum cleaner. Your best event should be the 100-minute snooze.

Not Gaines. He has to swim in his. He has to realize that maybe 29 isn’t so ancient, after all. That he can still do the hydrofoil routine with surprising regularity, skimming across the water for 50, 100, sometimes 200 meters as if he were wearing flippers and hand paddles.

Just last month, in a moment of nostalgia, Gaines decided to resume his love affair with swimming. A whirlwind courtship, to be sure, what with the Olympic trials scheduled to begin Aug. 8. That doesn’t leave much time for some of the necessities of the sport, such as, well, training.

Swimmers are species unto themselves. They migrate to the Olympics every four years, do what they can for nationalism, and then disperse, as if nothing happened. They are like fireworks--the center of attention as they blaze away, but usually forgotten at powder’s end.

This was Gaines’ dilemma. He had won his three gold medals in 1984, culminating a swim career rich in records and memories. And although he truly thought he was ready to quit, he wasn’t. He still had water stuck somewhere in his ears. And no amount of deck duty was going to get it out. So a month ago, after noticing that the times in the sprint events weren’t much lower than when he swam, Gaines chose to plunge headfirst into a sport meant for the solitary and ruled by the second hand of a stopwatch.

“Gawd, I’m 29 years old and everybody I know who are my friends are out there with a briefcase and a coat and tie working,” said Gaines, who wears considerably less for his occupation. “I’m wondering, ‘Am I doing the right thing? Should I be out there in the real world?’ ”

This Olympic gig seems real enough to me. I can’t imagine anything requiring much more physical or mental discipline than plunking yourself in a cold pool at 5 a.m. every day and doing lap after lap after lap. Or standing on the starting blocks knowing you have to cross 100 meters in less than 49 seconds or so to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team. Or knowing that you’re about a decade older than most of the guys in the same race.

Gaines said he has felt the stares of coaches and other swimmers. They all want to know the same thing: Can he return from almost four years of competitive inactivity and win, or at least qualify for another Olympics?

To this, Gaines answers with a resounding, “I don’t know.”

“I felt so weird walking in here . . .” Gaines said. “I’ve walked into pools, obviously, since the Olympics, as a coach or as a spectator. But I walked in here knowing I was going to be in the water, warming up, and I felt really . . . out of place.”

He’ll get over it, said his coach, Dave Marsh, who predicts grand things for Gaines.

“I can’t separate my heart from my head,” Marsh said. “If Rowdy continues to swim as he has the last months, he’ll be one of the six (to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team from the 100-meter event in the Olympic trials come August).”

If nothing else, Gaines has a support system that ensures all sorts of confidence. He’s respected and, in some circles, revered. Marsh is a former college pal. And members of his Las Vegas Gold Swim Team add to the fun by saying some of the darnedest things.

Not long ago, 16-year-old Tyler Mayfield, a junior national record holder in the breaststroke, became exasperated with a playful Gaines. “I was acting below his age,” said Gaines, the supposed adult.

Mayfield could take only so much. At wit’s end, he told Gaines in a huff: “Rowdy, you’re so immature.”

Gaines took it as a compliment. “I don’t ever want to lose that, being called a kid.”

He also wouldn’t mind being called an amateur, a point of contention at the moment among some U.S. swimming officials and most definitely among the international swimming ruling body. Already, Gaines has put his earnings into a trust fund, which he said he hopes will satisfy the fellas from the assorted legal departments. Now if he can just clear up this other little matter concerning a two-year stint as a coach shortly after the 1984 Olympics.

Seems Gaines coached the Las Vegas Swim Team from 1985 to 1987. Also seems that there’s a rule that prohibits him from competing in international meets for at least two years if he does this very thing. Gaines has a problem.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with money,” he said. “It’s just got something to do with coaching. I would be really disappointed (if disqualified). That’s a silly rule.”

Gaines accepts partial blame for the confusion. He decided only a month ago to attempt a comeback. And it wasn’t until 25 minutes before his first event that he was even given the OK by U.S. Swimming attorneys to compete in the Mission Viejo meet. So things have been rushed.

And I can see why FINA, the international organization, would give Gaines the thumbs down. After all, he was busy ruining the good name of the sport by teaching kids the proper leg kick for sprint races. Meanwhile, track star Edwin Moses made what--$10 jillion last year? But Moses will be in Seoul.

What a shame if Gaines couldn’t even try.