U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials : Biondi, on Record Pace, Fades in 200 Freestyle

After setting the U.S. record during the preliminary heats and setting a world-record pace through most of the final, sprinter Matt Biondi faded in the stretch and lost the 200-meter freestyle to 19-year-old Troy Dalbey on Monday, the first day of the U.S. Olympic swimming trials at the University of Texas Swim Center.

Dalbey, who is from San Jose and bound for Brigham Young University in the fall, philosophized later that second place is just as good as first place in this meet--the Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming Long Course National Championships--because both qualify for the Olympics.

True, by finishing second Biondi won the right to represent the United States in the 200 freestyle race in Seoul next month. He’ll still have the chance to swim for the gold against world record-holder Michael Gross of West Germany.

But Biondi wasn’t around to hear Dalbey explain that second place was good enough. He didn’t feel much like talking about it. He told one reporter that he knew he shouldn’t be disappointed, but he was.

U.S. Coach Richard Quick wasn’t complaining. From a team point of view, the men’s 200 was a great success. Figure in Janet Evans’ U.S. record in the 400 individual medley, Angel Myers’ U.S. record in a very fast women’s 100 freestyle, and Quick was “ecstatic.”

Biondi had lowered this own U.S. record in the morning by swimming the 200 in 1 minute 47.72 seconds. He was just off the world record of 1:47.44 held by Gross, and he was going for that in the final session when Dalbey caught him from behind to win the event in 1:48.35. Biondi was second in 1:48.37.

Doug Gjertsen finished third in 1:48.79 and Matt Cetlinski was fourth in 1:49.12, giving the United States a strong 800 freestyle relay team to challenge the West Germans, who hold the world record.

The top four finishers in the women’s 100 freestyle will make for a formidable 400 relay team. Dara Torres, who started the day as the U.S. record-holder, did not finish in the first two, so she won’t be competing for an individual medal. She was third in 55.74 seconds. But she will be a key to the relay.

Myers, who will be a junior at Furman, set the U.S. record in the morning and lowered it to 54.95 in the final. Mitzi Kremer, who swims for Concord-Pleasant Hill, was second in 55.40.

The last member of that relay team will be Mary Wayte, the Olympic gold medalist in 1984 in the 200 freestyle. She was fourth in 55.76.

The fifth- and sixth-place finishers, who are likely to make the team as alternates if some of the top swimmers qualify in more than one event, were Laura Walker and Paige Zemina.

Just out of range for making the team was Jill Sterkel, 27, who was trying to become the first female swimmer to make four Olympic teams. Sterkel, who decided to make one more comeback while swimming last September to rehabilitate after a knee injury, said that the ovation from the crowd of 1,887 was reward enough for all her work.

Sterkel, who swam for the University of Texas and who works with that school’s women’s team, just barely made the final, tying with another veteran, Mary T. Meagher, for the last two spots. In the final, Sterkel beat Meagher but didn’t earn a spot on the team. She will have another chance in the 50-meter freestyle and in the butterfly events. But those would take a top-two finish. Her best bet was to make the top six in the 100.

This meet, the most intense that the swimmers face, always has its disappointments to offset its joys.

On the opening day, another sentimental favorite, John Moffet, came up short. Moffet had set the world record in the 100 breaststroke in the Olympic trials in ’84 only to pull a leg muscle in the preliminaries of the Los Angeles Games that kept him from being competitive in the final. Moffet has been trying to come back from that injury.

He had to win a head-to-head swimoff with Kirk Stackle to make the final, the first swimoff he has ever experienced, and he said that left him “zapped.” He finished eighth in the final of the event on which he has been focusing. He will compete in the 200 breaststroke, too, but he had no reason to think the 200 would be better for him.

Moffet said: “I have no regrets. I worked absolutely as hard as I possibly could. I gave everything I possibly could.”

The happy ending in the 100 breaststroke was for Rich Schroeder, a 1984 Olympian who had retired, but had the nagging feeling that he hadn’t given it all that he possibly could, and came back to win the national title and the top spot on the Olympic team.

Schroeder took a leave of absence from the auditing department of Price Waterhouse in San Francisco, and started swimming better times than he ever had.

He won Monday night in 1:01.96, making his goal to go under 1:02, but missing his goal of beating Steve Lundquist’s world record of 1:01.65.

That’s within reach at Seoul, and Schroeder certainly has no regrets about his comeback.

The surprise up-and-comer was also in the 100 breaststroke. Dan Watters, 17, from Pensacola, Fla., was second in 1:02.76.

Asked if he was surprised at making the team, Watters said, “You want the truth? Yeah.”

Evans was no surprise, though, when she won the 400 individual medley. Evans, who swims for the Fullerton Aquatic Sports Team, won in 4:38.58, beating the American record of 4:39.24 set by Tracy Caulkins in 1984.

Erica Hansen of the Mission Bay Makos was a distant second in 4:42.37--and still the top two finishers had the best times in the world this year.

No wonder Quick was smiling.

Swimming Notes

The U.S. Olympic Committee granted U.S. Swimming an extra coach’s pass for Seoul, and Coach Richard Quick named Stanford Coach Skip Kenney to fill the position. Quick said he chose Kenney, “Based on his performance with the Pan-Am Games team and his own team. And I feel like he complements me.” . . . Not even making the final heat in the women’s 100-meter freestyle was Carrie Steinseifer, who tied with Nancy Hogshead for the gold medal in the 1984 Olympics in that event. . . . Craig Oppel of UCLA and Dan Jorgensen of the Rancho Bernardo swim team finished fifth and sixth in the men’s 200 freestyle. They are not guaranteed a spot on the Olympic team, but they are likely to move into the lineup as alternates on the relay. . . . Jill Sterkel’s time of 56.61 seconds in the women’s 100 freestyle was better than her 56.83, good for sixth place, in 1984.

Jorgensen on Monday was the first person to compete in a suit made of the new DARLEXX Superskin, a laminate of a warp-knit Lycra spandex fabric and a special hydrophilic thermoplastic film. Janet Evans calls it “that slicky stuff.” It looks like something off the Starship Enterprise. Research and development teams from Darlington Fabrics Corp., which manufactures the fabric, and U.S. Swimming have found it to have the lowest drag coefficient of any fabric. Suits are being made of the fabric by a company named TYR. The president of TYR is Steve Furniss, a former USC swimmer who was an Olympian and a world record-holder. Furniss said Monday that he thought swimmers would, eventually, want to wear the suits because of the fast fabric, but he wasn’t sure they could get used to the “very different feel” before the Olympics. Too, TYR has experimented with several variations of the women’s suit. Evans has worn Superskin suits in workouts and in the meet at Mission Viejo, where she won every event she entered. But she said that she had trouble with water getting into the suit and staying there. Pulling at the top of the suit she was wearing, she explained, “Water comes in here and it stays in here, and you’re like carrying an extra couple of pounds of water. . . . They’re working on it. I hope they get it right.” A TYR spokesman stressed, “It’s still in development.”