Setting His Sights on Barcelona : Vela Will Swim in the ’88 Games, but He Dreams of Gold in ’92

The year: 1992.

The city: Barcelona, Spain.

Ernie Vela, a swimmer from the Mission Viejo Nadadores, stands on the Olympic podium, accepting a gold medal. The crowd cheers; the flags are raised; the music plays.

It’s the same dream Vela has shared with many teammates ever since he began swimming with the Nadadores almost four years ago.

The only difference is, in Vela’s version, he doesn’t hear “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He hears “ Himno Nacional de Mexico ,” the national anthem of Mexico, instead.

Vela, a graduate of Mission Viejo High School but a citizen of Mexico, smiles at the thought.

For Vela, the ’92 Games may be a long way off in terms of time, but not in terms of ability.

Vela, 19, competed in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles as a member of Mexico’s team and has qualified for the Mexican team again this year. But what he is looking for in Seoul this summer is improvement, which he hopes could lead to a medal in Barcelona.

“This year, my goal is to make the finals, to finish in the top eight,” said Vela, who will swim the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke.

“But 1992 will be my best chance at a medal. You can think that’s a long way off, but I look back at 1984 and see how fast the time has passed since then.”

There have been a lot of changes in Vela’s life since the XXIII Olympiad. A move to another country, followed by the struggle to establish himself with the Nadadores and, finally, the climb toward the upper echelon of his sport.

Vela was the youngest swimmer to compete in the ’84 Olympics, in which he swam the 100 and 200 backstroke. Although he failed to make the finals, he left with the feeling that better days were ahead.

“I didn’t really make the standard time to qualify for the team,” said Vela, who lived in Mexico City at the time. “But I was so close (0.3 seconds) that I was put on the team. I think the feeling was, I was an investment for the future.”

During the Los Angeles Olympics, Vela and his family heard about the Nadadores’ program. Mario and Elena Vela decided to send their son to Mission Viejo to train in the fall of 1984.

However, instead of Ernie, they were planning to send the oldest of their three sons, Mario, who now swims for Texas A&M; and holds the Mexican record in the 100-meter breaststroke.

“Mario was going to go try out for the Nadadores by himself,” Ernie said. “A week before he left, my mom told me if I wanted to go, I could. So I took a chance.”

Both brothers were accepted into the program.

However, because their father had to remain in Mexico City to tend to his natural gas business, Ernie and Mario lived in Mission Viejo with a host family.

Moving to a new country was traumatic enough, but being away from his family made adjusting to the new culture even more difficult for Ernie.

“The language, the people, the customs, everything was different,” Vela said. “I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t know what to say. Even knowing English, it was still hard to communicate.”

The problem with the language wasn’t speaking it; Vela had learned English in school in Mexico. The problem was understanding it.

Vela said that such words as cool and dude baffled him. Each slang expression confused him more.

“All those words, they didn’t make sense at first,” Vela said. “It’s like if you went to Mexico and spoke Spanish. It’s the same language as in Spain, but there are different expressions.”

The father visited his sons in October and noticed they were not completely happy.

When he returned to Mexico City, he made arrangements to move his entire family north. He sold his business and bought a home in Mission Viejo.

By December, the family was reunited.

“Just imagine if you were in another country, another culture, with no friends,” Mario Vela Sr. said. “It would not be easy. Both of them were champions in Mexico; everyone knew them. Up here, they were just another pair of swimmers.”

Ernie Vela’s Nadadore career didn’t get off to a great start. Although his times were among the best in Mexico, in the United States, they were considered average on a national standard.

Vela continued to swim with the pack, neither standing out nor falling behind. But living with his family again improved his outlook.

“It was frustrating at times,” Vela said. “It was hard adjusting to school, and I wasn’t swimming very fast. But when my parents moved up here, things started to get better.”

Nadadore Coach Terry Stoddard, who was the team’s assistant coach at the time, saw potential in Vela, then 16. All that was needed were some training and some time to grow.

“When Ernie got here, he didn’t look like he was an Olympic swimmer,” Stoddard said. “But that was because he hadn’t started to physically mature yet. But that was no different than most swimmers his age.”

Stoddard became the Nadadores’ head coach in 1985, replacing Mark Schubert, who had gone to establish the Mission Bay Makos in Florida. It was then that Vela began making great improvement.

“Mark was a great coach, but he would always go off and work with the world champions, while Terry worked with the rest of us,” said Vela, who has been swimming competitively since he was 9.

Still, the Vela brothers, including Andy, who is two years younger than Ernie and is also a swimmer for the Nadadores, respected Schubert enough to want to go with him. So the family packed up their belongings and drove to Florida.

“We were going to move there,” Ernie said. “We took just about everything with us. But we didn’t like the area or the team.”

Mario Vela Sr. said: “We were that crazy. We must have been to drive to Florida, following a coach.”

In the end, uprooting the family once was enough. After a few days, the Velas drove back to Mission Viejo and the Nadadores.

With Stoddard as head coach, Ernie Vela began improving rapidly.

In 1986, he competed in the World Games, which were held in Barcelona, where his mother’s family lived. In 1987, he swam in the Pan American Games, finishing seventh in the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke.

“Swimming for Terry really turned things around for me,” Vela said. “Everybody kept saying that he couldn’t win the national championship (team junior Olympics in 1985), so it made everyone on the team work harder to prove them wrong. I wanted to swim my best, not for me, but for Terry.” The Nadadores won the title.

Starting last summer, Vela had three goals for the coming year.

The first was to qualify for the Mexican Olympic team, which he did in March at the senior nationals.

Vela swam the 200-meter backstroke in 2 minutes 5.9 seconds and the 100 backstroke in 59.58, becoming the first Mexican to go under a minute in that event. Both times would have qualified Vela for the U.S. Olympic trials.

The second goal was to compete in the Southern Section meet for Mission Viejo High school.

But in April, Vela was ruled ineligible for high school meets by Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas. Vela and Amy Shaw of Capistrano Valley had competed at an international meet in Canada during the school season without having sought a waiver to do so, which is a violation of Southern Section rules. Both were ruled ineligible.

“It was a shame,” said Vela, who had won the Southern Section 200 backstroke as a sophomore and junior. “It was not a selfish thing; I wanted to help the team. I had been on the varsity all four years.”

Mission Viejo Coach Mike Pelton said: “Even though he couldn’t compete, Ernie was there at the final, cheering for his teammates. Knowing his disappointment, that showed a lot of character.”

Vela’s final goal for the year is to do well in the Olympics, for which he has been training since 1984.

I want to get my time in the 200 down around 2:02 or 2:03 before the Games,” he said. “If I do that, I will make the finals in Seoul.”

Stoddard said: “He’s just starting to believe in himself and that he belongs among the big boys. You haven’t seen the best of Ernie Vela yet.”