THE DRIVE WITHIN : Niels Jorgensen Steers His Sons Toward Olympics

America is God’s crucible, the great melting pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!

--ISRAEL ZANGWILL

The Melting Pot (1908), Act I

Niels Jorgensen is a Dane who worked for a Swedish car maker in Switzerland, married a German and raised two sons to be Olympic swimmers in the United States.

There are two Volvos in his Rancho Penasquitos garage and two more parked on the winding street in front of his quiet, landscaped suburban yard.

One of the cars belongs to his older son, Daniel, 20, who two years ago broke the American record of 1984 Olympic gold medalist George DiCarlo in the 400-meter freestyle. The car is older than Daniel. Remarkably, the record and the car are still intact.

The station wagon belongs to his younger son, Lars, 17, who will join his brother on scholarship at USC in the fall. Lars Jorgensen is a legitimate threat to make the U.S. team in the 1,500-meter freestyle at the Olympic trials next month in Austin, Tex. Lars’ car has more than 300,000 miles on it, which seems almost as many as he and his brother swim each week.

Jorgensen’s wife, Roswitha, drives a white Volvo to and from the hospital in Orange County, where she works nights. She met her husband at English classes in Connecticut in the 1960s.

All of which proves two things: Zangwill’s melting pot is alive and well in Southern California. And the Jorgensens are driven.

Once upon a time in America, Niels Jorgensen was a highly paid executive and a highly demanding part-time wrestling coach in Baltimore. He had been the light-heavyweight national champion in Denmark and a sure bet to wrestle for his country in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. That was before a deadly outbreak of typhoid fever in Switzerland, where he was working, hospitalized 93 people. Twenty-three did not survive.

“It just tore my stomach apart inside,” he said. “But I never thought I would die.”

Similarly, he never dreamed he would one day become a swimming coach.

Still, it was almost two months before doctors allowed him to leave the hospital. By then he looked more like a prune Danish than an Olympic wrestler. But he departed a changed man.

“While I was in the hospital, I learned for the first time in my life how beautiful flowers are and how beautiful grass was,” he said. “I learned how beautiful it was to watch the children. I learned a lot about life. I hear people complaining about life now. They don’t know how lucky they are.”

Jorgensen was so thankful about what he learned during his recuperation, he considered it a religious experience. There was almost a reluctance accompanied by wonderment on his part when it came time to leave.

“I walked out of the hospital backwards,” he said, describing an act of deference that had nothing to do with his medical condition.

“At first I was sorry I had missed the Olympics. But after I got out of the hospital, I never thought about it. I was happy I could see the sunshine coming up every morning. I was just so happy to be alive.”

If you have just joined Niels Jorgensen’s Rancho Bernardo swim team, you will not be happy to be alive for long. You will be told to do push-ups. You will be told to do sit-ups. If your stroke deteriorates on the last lap of the day, you will be told it is because you are not fit. You will not be coddled. But you vill get faster.

“He’s a very strict disciplinarian,” Daniel Jorgensen says of his father. “The workouts under him are more difficult than any other coach I’ve ever swum for. They might not be as long. But my dad will not just sit there and watch you work out. He keeps track of how the workout is going.”

From across the living room, Niels Jorgensen protests: “I’m the easiest guy in town.”

“According to you,” Daniel shoots back.

It is approaching midday in the Jorgensen living room. But the morning swim ended more than three hours ago. Not even four hours after David Letterman signs off, the Jorgensen men are out of bed, preparing for the first of two daily workouts. They have been doing this six days a week for longer than they care to remember.

“You get used to it,” Lars says.

“It (stinks),” Daniel says.

“It keeps the kids off the streets,” Niels says. “The government in this country should support swimming more.”

After Volvo had moved Jorgensen from Baltimore to Connecticut in the mid-’60s, he switched athletic allegiances from wrestling to swimming. He took classes in how to teach the sport. He met Roswitha. They started a family. Soon the good people of New London had convinced him to coach their boys.

Immediately, there were complaints that he worked the children too hard. The complaints slowed when the team’s swimmers began swimming faster than any others in the state.

Niels Jorgensen’s English wasn’t so good yet. But improvement was something those Connecticut Yankees understood. Where once Jorgensen had been a little too dogged for their taste, suddenly he was a great Dane. A pattern was developing.

It repeated itself in Chicago, when Jorgensen left the security of Volvo for a full-time coaching job in suburban Palatine. Once again, the parents’ complaints died down when the times dropped.

By now, Jorgensen had determined that his sons, too, had a future in swimming. And he decided he didn’t want to miss it.

“There is not much money in coaching,” he said. So he damned the expense.

“We had to learn to eat hot dogs instead of steaks,” he said. “And our life style went down. But it was more of a healthy life style. You want to see your kids grow up. You can’t do that when you’re 50 or 60 years old. You do it now, or you never do it.”

After his coaching successes in Chicago, Jorgensen was no longer a secret. He accepted a position on the coaching staff at the prestigious Mission Viejo complex. Mission Viejo hires ambitious coaches. It does not question them. At 16, Daniel barely missed making the 1984 U.S. Olympic team while swimming for Mission Viejo.

He says he will be disappointed if he does not make the team this time. He will attempt to do so in the 200, 400 and 1,500 meters. The top two in each event make it. But he could finish as low as fifth or sixth in the 200 and still gain a spot on the 800-meter relay team.

“I will have nobody to blame but myself if I don’t make the team,” he says.

Actually, he might have his brother to blame. Lars also has qualified for the trials in the 400 and 1,500. They are the only active brother team among the top 25 in all-time U.S. ratings in any event, Daniel 5th in the 1,500 and Lars 21st (as of May). And it’s not inconceivable that the two could end up fighting for the second Olympic berth in that event.

It would be nothing new. They fight each other and the clock every day in the pool during workouts.

“It gets tense during practices,” Lars says. “If I beat him, he gets mad.”

The Jorgensens train in the 50-meter pool at NAS Miramar, the home base for their father’s Rancho Bernardo Bluefins. Unlike Mission Viejo, the Miramar pool has no crosses on top of the ends of the lane markers. That means Jorgensen’s swimmers have to guess when to start their flip turns.

And that is particularly maddening. Jorgensen’s reputation within the American swimming community is that of a coach who has insisted upon keeping up with the latest in technological advances.

“Niels Jorgensen is extremely intellectual in his approach to swimming,” said Jeff Dimond of United States Swimming Inc., the national governing body for amateur competitive swimming in this country. “A lot of the older coaches will fight new developments.”

Two years ago, politics prevailed, and Mark Schubert, Jorgensen’s boss at Mission Viejo, left California for the Mission Bay Aquatic Center in Boca Raton, Fla. Schubert, who had built Mission Viejo into the winningest club program in American swimming history, asked Jorgensen to come with him.

But Daniel was already enrolled at USC, Roswitha had a steady job, and the family was tired of moving.

“Niels got caught in the political cross fire at Mission Viejo even though he was an innocent bystander,” said a U.S. swimming official.

The Rancho Bernardo opportunity presented itself. And Jorgensen didn’t hesitate. But the adjustment was not an easy one.

“I was used to coaching national champions and really fast swimmers for so many years,” Jorgensen said. “I came in here and at times had to turn my back and say, ‘Oh, nooo!’ ”

Just as he’d had to do in Connecticut and Chicago.

“When Niels gets mad, he will cuss you out in Danish and then talk to you in English,” Dimond said. “He’s a first-class character. But he’s a good guy.”

Steve Eisler, swim coach at Mt. Carmel High School in the San Diego area, thought Jorgensen was a great guy when he found out he was enrolling Lars in his school and sending him out for Eisler’s team. There had been talk of Lars training outside the school and not swimming on the team.

“Everybody on my team improved because of working with him,” Eisler said. “In fact, there has been a swimming improvement all over San Diego County, thanks to the influence of Lars and Dan.”

Lars Jorgensen won two San Diego Section championships for Mt. Carmel in the recently completed high school season. Daniel won the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. 1,650-yard freestyle for USC.

Soon, Niels Jorgensen will find out if one or both of his sons achieves the dream he never got a chance to realize--the dream of participating for his country in the Olympics. Their chief competition at the trials will probably be from Florida’s Matt Cetlinski and California’s Sean Killion.

Fortunately for the Jorgensen boys, their father has retained his perspective.

“I would be happy for them to make the Olympics,” he said. “You would always like your children to do the best they can possibly do. It would be nice to see them make the Olympics. But it is not the end of the world. I’d like them better to enjoy what they’re doing. You have to realize you win in life, and you lose in life. And you have to keep going.”

The important thing is to keep going in the same direction. Niels Jorgensen had to take an $18,000 cut in his annual pay when he became a full-time swimming coach. His wife supported the move. There have been tough times but few regrets. When the cars need repairs, Niels does the work himself.

“I like working with young people,” Jorgensen said. “I think it is more rewarding, even though the money isn’t.”

Niels Jorgensen’s sons know their father was supposed to be in the Olympics. But Daniel Jorgensen said: “He’s never really gotten into the details.”

Maybe someday, when they are older, he will explain to them why he walked backward out of that Swiss hospital.

In the meantime, the Jorgensens are a prototypical melting-pot family living a rare American success story that isn’t dominated by a quest for financial gain.

They know the difference between fool’s gold and Olympic gold. And they are comfortable in that knowledge.