THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 8 : Evans Is Already the Sweetheart of the Summer Games

Morning comes early to the Evans family--it comes in the middle of the night. By 4:45, Janet Evans is already climbing into her father’s car for the 15-minute drive to swim practice.

“I drop her off, go home and go right back to sleep,” said Paul Evans, obviously a sensible man.

“We drive her to swimming, because if we didn’t, she’d crawl,” explained Barbara Evans, who picks up Janet when the workout is over.

Up at 4:30, in bed by 8. There’s swimming and schoolwork to juggle--all As and Bs, 1,100-plus on the college boards--and friends, too; Janet’s best friends aren’t swimmers, they’re regular public high school kids. Paul and Barbara would never have sent Janet away to one of those Bela Karolyi or Nick Bollettieri training prisons. “She’s my kid,” Barbara said. “I don’t want her with anyone else, I want her with me.” Considering how many of these Teen Titans end up planted on an analyst’s couch, it seems reasonably normal in the Evans house in Placentia. Oh, and did I mention a boyfriend? Yes, a boyfriend, too. That can’t be possible on Janet’s crowded schedule, can it? “It’s absolutely possible,” said Paul. “And if he goes home at a quarter to eight at night, he stays a boyfriend.”

Now that water bug Janet is poised on the runway, ready, in the tradition of Olga, Nadia and Mary Lou, to be crowned Sweetheart of the Olympics (Florence Griffith-Joyner is on a parallel runway ready to be named Sex Bomb of the Olympics), it’s time we met her family. Her father, Paul, a confessed sports junkie, is a veterinarian. She has two older brothers, 21 and 20; Janet is the baby at 17, 5 foot 4 and 100 pounds soaking wet--which is most of the time. And her mother, Barbara, can’t swim. That’s right, can’t swim, she’s afraid of the water. Is that a hoot, or what?

“Our kids were raised in Southern California, where everybody has a pool. We wanted one, too, so when the boys were 3 and 4, I started taking them for lessons, for safety’s sake,” Barbara said. “Janet was a baby, I took her along with me. Well, she was always a hyperactive child. She didn’t like sitting with me, she wanted to swim, too. The instructor said, ‘If she doesn’t cry, I’ll give her lessons.’ So they threw her in the water, she didn’t cry, and she’s been swimming ever since.”

She’s such an unlikely looking champion. First, her style is so awkward. She bats at the water, thrashing around like a puppy in the bathtub. Second, she’s so small. She’s so small it’s as if the wake from the other lanes should wash her onto the deck. The other night Janet was sitting between the two East German women she’d beaten on her way to a world record in the 400-meter freestyle. These women were big, and almost identical with their curled ringlets of blond hair, ice-cold blue eyes and broad shoulders. Silent and rather dour, they resembled great stone lions guarding a library. And between them, this little slip of a giggly thing with short brown hair that doesn’t even come over her ears, this little pixie, this Peter Pan in Never Never Land who won’t grow up, but who’ll strap on a bathing cap and magically become the toughest gun in the valley.

“You think she’s small now?” Barbara laughed. “You should have seen her when she was really, really small. It’s normal for her to swim against bigger girls. There weren’t any smaller girls.”

“If she couldn’t beat them, she wouldn’t,” said Paul, staring off into space because it’s another question about Janet’s size, and he hears them a lot. “Every hour over here.”

But that’s the key factor, isn’t it? The way she looks. It’s the incongruity of how small and cute they are and the results they get that pop a Nadia and an Olga and a Mary Lou out of the deck. This time it’s Janet Evans, with her soup bowl Beatles haircut and her sly I’m-about-to-throw-a-spitball smile. Magazine covers. Network features. Talk show guest shots. Newspaper takeouts. Camera crews camped out on the driveway -- the Full Dan Quayle Trip. There goes the neighborhood.

“Lots of you media types dropping by for a cup of coffee, and sometimes,” Paul said, winking, “a glass of Chardonnay.”

“It will really interfere with our normal life,” Barbara said with some trepidation.

“What will be, will be,” sighed Paul. “But maybe we should have taught her how to hit a slider . . .”

“I mean it’s hard to comprehend,” Barbara cut in, “how she could be a big star. She still looks at Matt Biondi as something like a god, she’s in awe of him. She can’t understand why anyone would want her autograph. Well, the good thing is, she wants to swim in college, and the eligibility rules are strict, and that’ll protect her some.”

Stanford, Texas and Florida are mentioned.

Can she get into Stanford?

Paul grilned one of those it’s-in-the-bag grins. “With two gold medals? What do you think?”

Which is funny, because just a few minutes before, in that same press conference where she was sitting between those library lions, Janet Evans was blushing as she admitted that, yes, she’d brought some homework with her from El Dorado High School, but no, she hadn’t done it. “I was suppposed to read ‘Siddhartha,’ and I only read one page,” she said, speaking at her usual breakneck speed, punctuated with her usual little hiccupy sounds, the total effect sounding like Tracey Ullman’s Mall Girl running for a bus. “I leave for home in three days, and I have to go to school the next day, and, uh-oh, I haven’t started anything.” She stopped short, and looked up smiling. There was no turning back now. “I’m not going to do it,” she said resolutely. “I’m just going to go back and see what the teacher says.”

With two golds? What do you think?