WATERSHED : Boitano’s Performance Inspired Ruiz-Conforto to New Level

Brian Boitano, of all people, gives Tracie Ruiz-Conforto the little burst of inspiration, the motivational image that keeps her comeback on track, that convinces her that she had to leave the show-biz extravaganzas at Cypress Gardens and Sea World, and take her act back to the practice pool.

Back to the world of compulsory figures, subjective judges and obsessive training. Back to international competition.

And she doesn’t even know Boitano. Never met him. Their sports do share such staples as smiles, sequins and water, but he skates his figures on top of frozen ponds, and she cavorts in her figures upside down in swimming holes.

Still, competition is competition and perfection is perfection. Ruiz-Conforto watched on TV as Boitano won the men’s figure skating gold medal in the Winter Olympics, and she ached to have a moment like that.

Oh sure, she had won both gold medals in synchronized swimming at the 1984 Olympic Games, but she hadn’t won the gold the way Brian Boitano had won the gold.

“When he finished, I could see on his face a feeling I knew I had not had,” Ruiz-Conforto said. “He had the feeling I wanted. He nailed it. He put it all together. He satisfied himself. He went into the locker room and took off his skates, and he was satisfied. He didn’t even watch the competition. He had pleased himself, and that was what mattered.

“I loved his attitude. I was happy for him. It was a wonderful thing to see. And I said, ‘Yes, that’s what was missing.’ I knew that I had to try to do that.”

Ruiz-Conforto, who had retired after the ’84 Games, had an inkling that she needed to return to competition long before she saw Boitano. She knew she felt left out when she watched the national competition in 1985. Her husband, Mike Conforto, who played football for Penn State, saw the signs of itchiness and encouraged her to get back to her sport. By September, 1986, she was back to serious training, back to thinking in terms of compulsory figures instead of compulsive showmanship.

But she had a long way to go. Her goal was not just another Olympic gold medal--although she had her work cut out for her just to do that, the way the other stars had come on. Her goal was to please herself with the kind of performance Boitano had shown.

In 1984, when synchronized swimming made its debut as an Olympic sport, the plan was to have competition for duets only. She and Candy Costie had their duet routine perfected and, as expected, won the gold. But with only two months’ notice, it was also decided that there would be solo competition in Los Angeles, and Ruiz-Conforto had to throw together a new routine.

She wasn’t pleased with what she called bits and pieces of a lot of old routines, although it was good enough to win the gold medal.

The routine that she has choreographed for the Games in Seoul is a dynamic, dramatic, “super difficult” presentation that certainly will leave her feeling satisfied if she performs it to gold-medal perfection.

“I’ve really tried to push myself about as far as I can,” she said.

The routine is so difficult that the first time she presented it, at a clinic at San Diego State, she almost killed herself.

The opening of the routine is a series of underwater strength moves, including two quick 360-degree spins. Then, after 50 seconds of not breathing and yet expending all that energy, she bursts up out of the water and throws her head back for a dramatic pose.

She had just struck that pose when she realized that she was dizzy because she was hyperventilating. She was just losing consciousness and sinking when she heard someone yell, “Jump in and get her.”

Even the best swimmers are in trouble when they lose consciousness in the water.

“Luckily, I managed to recover and I didn’t have to be pulled out,” Ruiz-Conforto said. “That would have been terrible, with all those little girls watching me. And the Js were there.”

The Js are the Jorgenson twins, Karen and Sarah, who will represent the United States in the duet competition in Seoul.

Since making the Olympic team, Ruiz-Conforto, who lives in Bothell, Wash., has gotten together several times for training with the Jorgensons, who live in Bristol, Conn.

Because the stars of synchronized swimming make their performances look so effortless, it is easy to underestimate the rigorous training that goes into the presentation. It is obvious that the women have to have ballet-type skills and dramatic showmanship, but they also have to have incredible strength to do stunts that make them look as if they are springing off trampolines when there is nothing but deep water under them, and they have to have the aerobic training to hold their breath for long periods.

How long?

While an NBC crew was taping an interview, someone put a stopwatch on Ruiz-Conforto and found that she could hold her breath for at least 2 minutes 25 seconds, and she stopped before she turned blue in front of the camera.

Ruiz-Conforto also works with weights to get the strength she needs for the power moves, and when she started her comeback, she worked herself into such good shape at her husband’s health clubs that she was able to win a women’s body-building contest in Portland.

But at that, she outdid herself. She got down to 9% body fat and was too lean to float. Really. She kept sinking. At 11%, she can float. And 11% is still pretty lean.

“I need a lot of strength for this new routine, because it is so quick-moving and full of energy,” Ruiz-Conforto said. “It has to be dramatic and dynamic for one soloist in the middle of a 50-meter pool to have an impact.”

Ruiz-Conforto has always been able to make an impact with her routines. Whenever she has faltered, it has been in the compulsory figures, the technical rituals held in an earlier session that most people don’t even bother to watch. But figures count for 55% of the score. So Ruiz-Conforto has put in a lot of hours making sure that her figures meet the new, more demanding specifications.

When Canada’s Carolyn Waldo defeated her in the first major competition of her comeback, the World Championships in 1987, Ruiz-Conforto lost in figures competition but won the routine competition. It was the same when she lost to Kristen Babb of Walnut Creek just before the Olympic trials.

But by showtime--the trials--she was ready. She won both phases of the competition to beat out Babb for the solo spot. And she has since beaten Waldo in a pre-Olympic meet, with winning figures.

Even though Waldo is the reigning world champion, Ruiz-Conforto is looking like the favorite for the solo gold in Seoul.

So did the powers that be in U.S. synchronized swimming beg her to make this comeback?

“Oh, no,” Ruiz-Conforto said. “They never even said, ‘We need you!’ or anything like that. But I have felt a lot of support.

“I’ve felt like a lot of people were glad I came back, that I could help try to unseat the Canadians (the world champion has been a Canadian since Ruiz-Conforto retired), but the other half was thinking, ‘Why don’t you give somebody else a chance?’

“I did have to deal with a negative side, with people who said, ‘You’re crazy. You have nothing to gain and everything to lose. You’ve won everything. Quit while you’re ahead.’

“But competition is about going for it. If I knew, for sure, that I could win, that wouldn’t be competition.”

Losing was a new experience for Ruiz-Conforto. But that, too, was a motivating factor.

“(Losing to Kristen Babb) was the best thing that could have happened to me,” she said. “If I win the gold, it will probably be because of that loss, and what I learned from it. Kristen is an up-and-comer, and she should be there for the next Olympics. Kristen, hopefully, is better for me beating her, too.”

Ruiz-Conforto has no intention of sticking around until the 1992 Olympic Games. The comeback was hard enough at 25. She doesn’t want to push herself like that until she is 29.

But she is not going to make the same mistake she made after 1984. She’s not going to stop cold the day after she competes in Seoul.

“It’s so difficult to reach a point and just quit,” she said. “That was the mistake I made. So many athletes experience that. Your sport has been so much a part of your life for almost all of your life (for her, since she was 10), and it’s been part of your identity, your ego. And then it’s gone. It’s such a letdown.

“When I started this comeback, I learned the difference between being an elite athlete, with everything provided for you, and being on your own. I was used to having a coach provided, pool time provided, a condo to live in provided, someone to take care of my plane tickets--everything. When I started trying to make my own arrangements, pay a coach, call around looking for available pool time, all of those kinds of things, I came to the conclusion that you have to retire to see how good you really had it.”

After the Games in 1984, the synchronized swimmers didn’t know what to expect in the way of opportunities, since the sport was new in terms of public recognition. Ruiz-Conforto found that she was able to earn money by appearing at water shows.

If the sport continues to develop, if people like her can help get more coaches and more clubs in more cities, it might grow to the point that synchronized swimmers will have the kind of professional careers that ice skaters, such as Boitano, look forward to with the traveling ice shows.

Who knows what the future holds?

“I don’t know for sure what I’m going to do after these Olympics, but I know I won’t just quit,” she said. “Maybe another nationals. Maybe shows and clinics. But I know I can’t just stop.

“And I know that I can’t take myself too seriously. Every star is going to fade someday.”