IN THE WATER, OUT OF SIGHT : Costa Rican Swimmer Sylvia Poll Is Training Quietly for Olympics

Since coming out of nowhere to stun the world--or at least the Western Hemisphere--with her eight-medal performance in the Pan American Games at Indianapolis last summer, Sylvia Poll has virtually gone back into hiding in Costa Rica.

Not in back alleys or secluded villas. She was actually paraded through the streets in the frenzy of celebrations when she and her teammates made their triumphant return to the little country last August. They were invited to be guests of the president. They were pictured in all the newspapers.

But the 6-foot 2-inch swimmer, who became an instant celebrity in her adopted Central American country by bringing home its first gold medal, has gone quietly back to the business of workouts twice a day at her club pool. She has passed up the big international meets. She has avoided direct competition in the pool, and even time comparisons on paper, with the women she’ll meet in Seoul at the Olympic Games.

All by design. Poll has said again and again that she has absolute faith in the methods of her coach, Francisco Rivas. And he thought it best to let her concentrate on training, not on competition, in this Olympic year.

She explained that approach when she was here to compete in the Los Angeles Invitational this summer. The meet was low-key, as were the few other meets she has attended since the Pan American Games. The top U.S. swimmers were not here. There was no pressure.

She didn’t taper off her workouts and peak for that meet, either. So her times there were just rough indications of what she might be able to do in Seoul.

Sylvia Poll just may, once again, be a tall bundle of surprises.

Even she can’t say what she expects to do when she finds herself on the blocks against the best in the world. The only time she competed against East Germans and top Americans was in the World Championships in Madrid in 1986. She was sixth in the 200-meter freestyle. But that was ages ago in the career of a 17-year-old swimmer.

In Costa Rica, there is great anticipation building in the hope that Poll will bring home the country’s first Olympic medal.

But Poll doesn’t have any set goals in terms of how many medals she might win. She doesn’t even have goals in terms of what times she might swim.

“My coach has not yet told me what times I should swim,” Poll said. “I only know that he will tell me each day what I have to do to make the finals in my next event. For now, my goal is to make the final heat in my first event. Then he will tell me what I will have to do in the final. He knows what I can do.”

Rivas looks up into the calm, serious face of his protege, a young woman who towers over him but still looks up to him, and nods his approval. She has given the right answer.

Rivas spends about an hour and a half every day just talking with Poll. He is getting her prepared mentally as well as physically. He is working on her confidence, her concentration, her focus. He reads everything he can find on sports psychology and he says he is working to make Poll believe that swimmers from bigger countries are not necessarily better swimmers.

“I will be ready,” Poll said. “My coach is very, very good.”

She lists the credentials of her coach, noting that he was once swimmer of the year in Costa Rica, that he has 17 years of experience as a coach, and that in 1980 he coached Maria del Milagro Paris to a seventh-place finish in the Olympic Games.

Rivas beams.

Surely he knows what times he is hoping she will achieve in Seoul, but he isn’t saying. He carries with him a copy of this year’s world-best times, so that he knows what everyone else is doing. He seems satisfied to see Poll’s name on the lists, but he likes being able to say that he thinks she can go “a little faster” without having to tip his hand to the competition.

For example, she ranks 11th in the 100-meter freestyle with a time of 56.09 seconds, which she recorded at the Los Angeles Invitational, and she ranks 13th in the 200-meter freestyle with a time of 2:00.47, also recorded in Los Angeles.

Just what her potential is, it is impossible to say. She bristles at the suggestion that her potential might not be met if she stays in San Jose, Costa Rica, training with other swimmers who even she admits “are not very much competition.”

After introducing herself at the World Championships in August, 1986, Poll burst onto the scene in 1987 with Pan American gold medals in the 100-meter freestyle, the 200-meter freestyle and the 100-meter backstroke, silver medals in the 50-meter freestyle and the 200-meter backstroke, and a silver and two bronze medals on relay teams. No one would have been surprised if she had announced then that she was going out of the country to develop her talent.

To Mission Bay in Boca Raton, Fla., perhaps, to train with Mark Schubert? Or to Austin, Tex., to train with the Longhorn club of Richard Quick, also the U.S. team coach? Or to any college town, for that matter, where she could work with a coach who could also give her a college scholarship?

She has heard from Stanford and the University of Miami and maybe others. Poll said that she doesn’t always get the calls and letters herself. Her coach handles that for her.

But she says she’s not interested. She made it perfectly clear that she would train with Francisco Rivas and no one else. After all, he brought her this far, didn’t he?

“I have a very good coach and I have total trust in him,” Poll said. “Also, he is a friend.”

And with the honor of giving Costa Rica its first gold medal--until Poll hit the pool at Indianapolis, the best Costa Rica had done was a Pan American bronze medal in soccer in 1951--came an obligation. She didn’t want to take the medals and run.

She realizes, because of Rivas’ counseling, the importance of her accomplishments to a country with no history of recognition in international sports. “It is important to my country,” she says.

Of course, she is recognized everywhere she goes. A 6-2 blonde can’t help but stand out in a country where the norm is much shorter and much darker. That’s not always good.

Montserrat Hidalgo, a friend and teammate of Poll’s, told The New York Times: “It isn’t always easy, because Latin Americans, especially Costa Ricans, like to be critical. They should be saying how great it is that she wins medals, but instead, when we go to the movies, you can hear people saying, ‘Look how big she is. She’s ugly. She’s macho.’ ”

Yet Poll feels as loyal to Costa Rica as she does to Rivas. She was very young when her mother and father, both Germans, moved the family from neighboring Nicaragua. By way of proof that she is a Costa Rican and not a Nicaraguan, she says, “They tell me that my accent in Spanish is a Costa Rican accent.”

But that’s just one of three languages she speaks--German at home, Spanish at the pool and with friends, and, when she went to an American school, English. Now she’s attending a German school and is considering continuing her studies in Germany. She’s interested in studying international relations. She might even like to be an ambassador someday.

So she is aware of the politics involved in her family’s move, and of the first conclusion people draw.

“We were not running away from the war,” Poll said. “We moved to Costa Rica because my father had property there, and because the schools were better.”

Her parents had moved from West Germany to Costa Rica 26 years ago, long before she was born, to develop their cotton factories. It was a cotton factory that took them to Costa Rica, too, she said. Her father died in 1983, while swimming. She thinks he had a heart attack. So she feels that it would be a very bad time to leave her mother and her younger sister.

In every interview, Sylvia mentions her younger sister, Claudia, who is 15 and who is, she insists, a better swimmer than she is.

Rivas nods. For the Olympic Games of 1992, Rivas might be training both of them. Sylvia has already committed herself to the next Games.