Wins at USC Meet After ’88 Seoul Defeat : Barrowman Sets World Swim Record

Mike Barrowman was disappointed with his performance in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. So disappointed, in fact, that he couldn’t bring himself to look at the videotape of his swim until April. His fourth-place finish, out of the medals, looked as bad as he remembered it.

“When I saw that, and I saw the man that I had trained with every day being that disappointed, I said, ‘I’ve got to do something about that,’ ” Barrowman said this morning after breaking the world record in a preliminary heat of the Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming Long Course National Championships.

Barrowman’s world record of 2 minutes, 12.90 seconds in the 200-meter breast stroke was the first world record set in this meet, the premier U.S. event of the season. It was also the first world record set by anyone this year.

U.S. Record Last Summer

Barrowman, 20, will be a junior this fall at the University of Michigan. This summer, he is swimming for the Curl-Burke Swim Club near his home in Rockville, Md.

Although Barrowman had set an American record in the University of Texas pool last summer during the Olympic trials (2:13.74) and had tied it in the finals, he had never before held a world record.

The record that he broke this morning of 2:13.34 had been set by Victor Davis of Canada when he won the Olympic gold medal in 1984.

In fact, Barrowman broke the record in the same lane of the pool on the USC campus that Davis had used in setting it.

No One Near Him

There was no one near him during his morning swim. It was Barrowman against the clock, doing exactly what he set out to do when he started his long course training.

Barrowman was the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. champion in the 200-yard breast stroke for Michigan. And he placed second in the 100-yard breast stroke. But he chose not to swim the 100-meter event in this meet because his coach, Joszef Nagy, wanted him to concentrate his efforts on the 200.

Nagy, who is from Hungary but is in the United States because his wife is on temporary duty with the World Bank in Washington, also prepared Barrowman for the Olympic trials and the Olympic Games.