Sneak Previews of Forthcoming Books : An Olympic Swimmer : ‘Dara Torres has her work cut out.’

From “Champions: The Making of Olympic Swimmers,” by Daniel F. Chambliss, published this month by William Morrow & Co. Copyright 1988 by Daniel Chambliss. Torres is competing in Seoul in this year’s Olympic Games.

WHEN DARA TORRES returned to her prep school in Los Angeles in the fall of 1984, she discovered that the Olympic Games were not just another swim meet. Kids in the hallways would whisper and look when she walked by; people wanted to ask her about her summer; the more curious asked to see her gold medal. There were television appearances, too, and banquets, and she became something of a celebrity, at least locally. One day the headmaster of her school asked if she would bring her gold medal for him to see, in its case. She did; he asked if he could keep it for the day. And that morning at the opening assembly, with the seniors (including Torres) sitting on the stage, as tradition required, the headmaster stood up and made a speech about how one student at the school did something different over the summer: She won an Olympic gold medal. He had Torres stand up in front of everyone, and he hung the medal around her neck. All the students and teachers applauded. Torres was embarrassed, not quite used to such attention. From then on, students came up to her frequently and asked her about the Games and wanted to see her medal. She saw herself as the same person, but how others saw her had been magically transformed.

She didn’t swim that fall. Instead she went out for the other sports she loved--volleyball and basketball. She enjoyed sleeping late, not having to drag herself out of bed early every day for morning workouts. She no longer smelled like chlorine all day. She enjoyed going out with friends on weekends and generally being a normal person. In the spring of her senior year, she looked over the best swimming schools and, realizing she was not a strong student academically, ruled out Stanford and then the University of Texas. For several months she flip-flopped between the University of Southern California and the University of Florida. USC was close to home; she had trained with Don Lamont, the coach there, and liked him. On the other hand, her father wanted her to visit Florida; Florida had Randy Reese, and he was tough and good. His team did innovative workouts, they seemed very scientific, and maybe she needed someone very strong to guide her. Reese took her out to lunch during the spring Nationals, told her about Florida swimming and the journalism program there (she was interested in that), and he impressed her. On the last day of the meet, after much worrying, she decided to go to Florida.

For Torres, Florida would not be like Mission Viejo. At Mission she had been a star, the great sprinter on a team of distance swimmers. But at Florida she was one of many great sprinters, and Reese was not a man to defer to her anyway. He gave her very tough workouts, pushed her to race against others in practice, trained her for longer events than just the 50 and the 100. He made her get down on all fours, with wheels under her knees, and walk using her hands up and down the ramps at the Florida football stadium; he made her swim with a rope around her waist, rigged to a pulley full of weights that held her back, across the pool in the O’Connell Athletic Center. He monitored her weight, talked to her about her diet, pushed her to swim races she didn’t like swimming. Initially her swimming performance was no better; it took her a while to adjust to the new program. But by her second year at Florida, Reese’s approach was paying off: Torres was stronger and her endurance was better. She could swim the 100 without fading, and her 200 was becoming respectable.

By 1987 she would be more serious about swimming than ever before in her life. At 15, success had come so easily: She’d step up on starting blocks, dive in and break a world record. Now, at 20, the sport was much harder. She had to train more, watch her weight and her diet, take care of her knees (which had suffered multiple injuries and surgical operations) and deal with the distractions of college life, which she relished. She was certainly more mature in her training. She no longer horsed around, as she sometimes had at Mission Viejo, sitting on the bottom of the pool in the middle of sets in practice, or sneaking as many as a dozen Twinkies into her room for snacks. Now she would “lead the lane,” going ahead of the other swimmers during practice, racing with the best of the men. And she found, to her surprise, that she enjoyed swimming more. She had found some new appreciation for the sport, and she looked forward to the Seoul Games. Perhaps she was hungrier than some others, with something more to prove. Yes, she had won a gold medal, but the East Germans hadn’t been there, and it wasn’t the individual 100 free but a relay. Some people had said that Torres was a drop-dead sprinter who couldn’t go the full distance. But Torres knew she could go faster, a lot faster, and maybe with Reese’s training and her new enthusiasm for the sport she could break another world record.

In 1987, at the Pan Pacific Games, Torres went 55.86 for the 100 free, the first time she had been under 56 and faster than the gold-medal time of the 1984 Olympics. It was her first international victory apart from relays. Her endurance has certainly improved from her teen-age days, and her training habits and attitude are better than ever, but she still tends to “die” coming back the second half. She remains almost 1 1/2 seconds behind the world record of East German Kristin Otto, who is still actively competing. Torres would have to make significant improvements to even hope for a win, and Otto has teammates who will be close to the gold medal. Dara Torres has her work cut out for her.