Rough Water Races Help Schmidt Glide Smoothly Into Class : Swimming: Former Newport Beach resident made enough money on pro marathon circuit to help pay his way through graduate school.

He lives a suit-and-tie lifestyle now, one filled with long hours and long-distance calls, power lunches and business meetings, and the thrill of dealing with millions in foreign currency.

International finance, says 30-year-old Bill Schmidt, can be a whirlwind experience.

But it doesn’t compare with swimming until you’re blue.

Schmidt, a former Newport Beach resident, spent five years traveling the world to compete in professional marathon swims, rough water ventures of three to 30 miles where certain factors--freezing temperatures, local wagering and the threat of sharks, for instance--add spice to the sport.

Although Schmidt says he has put his swimming on hold for a while, the money he earned from races is now helping pay his way through the master’s of business administration program at Notre Dame, which he expects to complete in May.

As a sort of career preview, Schmidt is spending the summer in Amsterdam, working as an international corporate finance administrator for the Netherlands’ largest bank.

It’s not often that swimmers make money in their sport, but the marathon races in which Schmidt competed paid well, though he refused to say exactly how well. He only offers this: In the summer of 1984, his first season, he made more money in one month than he did in six months working as a salesman for a copier company.

Schmidt, an All-American at California, was training for the 1984 Olympic Trials when he first heard about marathon swimming. Paul Asmuth, who along with Schmidt trained with the Mission Viejo Nadadores, told Schmidt that if he didn’t make the Olympic team, he should give the professional marathon swim circuit a try.

“I have to admit, the money part of it intrigued me,” says Schmidt, who finished eighth in the 1,500-meter swim at the trials.

“I spent 24 years of my life training really hard, so I figured it wouldn’t be too bad to finally get some money out of it.”

Except for swimming a few miles in the California Aqueduct every weekend during his college days, Schmidt had no rough water experience before he went on his first outing with Asmuth, a two-hour venture from Laguna Beach’s Main Beach to the Aliso Pier and back.

“The whole time I’m thinking to myself, ‘Am I going to be attacked by a gigantic fish?’ ” Schmidt says. “I didn’t feel too comfortable out there.”

He swam his first race--a 24-miler at Atlantic City, N.J.--one week later. The race started in a warm-water bay, but within 30 minutes, the swimmers hit the cold ocean currents. A fog rolled in, making it difficult for the escort boats to stay with the athletes.

Schmidt, who at 6 feet 1, 160 pounds, is smaller than most ocean swimmers, said when he hit the cold water, it knocked the wind out of him. Five hours 45 minutes into the race, his brother, Rob, finally pulled him into the boat and rushed him to the hospital.

“He was completely incoherent,” Rob said. “I said, ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ He couldn’t tell me. I said, ‘What’s your name?’ He couldn’t tell me that, either. The only answer I got out of him was when I asked, ‘Do you want to keep swimming?’ he’d say, ‘What do you think?’

“He was literally blue and purple and his eyes were bugging out of his goggles when we pulled him out. We got him to the hospital and his body temperature was 89 degrees.”

Schmidt entered another race a week later.

This time, though, he won, beating Asmuth at the International Memphremagog Swim Marathon, a prestigious 30-mile race from Newport, Vt., to Magog, Quebec, in the warm waters of Lake Memphremagog.

The race, the highlight of the annual summer festival at Magog, attracts nearly 50,000 spectators. Most line the shoreline, but others station their rowboats along the course route so the swimmers can hear the cheers during the race.

The cheering isn’t just for fun, though. Many townspeople bet on the swimmers, and after Schmidt beat the favored Asmuth in 1984, he began to feel like a race horse.

“People would come up to me and say, ‘I’ve got money on you,’ ” says Schmidt, who finished in the top 10 in the race four times. “I didn’t want to let them down.”

Although he didn’t return for this year’s race, one that is televised live on local TV, Schmidt is still considered a hero in Magog. During his swimming years, local newspapers wrote stories about him, restaurant owners refused to take his money for meals, and people stopped him on the street for autographs.

“It’s like living in Fantasyland,” says Schmidt. “It can be a pretty big ego trip.”

Although the Memphremagog Swim was the highlight each year, Schmidt participated in races from Capri, Italy, to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was in Cabo that he had his most frightening experience.

“The night before the race we went down to the docks and watched them haul in these huge hammerhead sharks,” Schmidt says. “We found out Cabo’s a breeding ground for hammerheads. The scary thing was, the water is crystal clear, you can see at least 20 feet below.”

Schmidt never saw a shark during the race--he said he forced himself not to look around--instead, he ran into several big jellyfish and got tangled in the tentacles. He said it felt like a million little pins hitting him.

Schmidt says he might return to the sport once he completes his MBA, but he’s wary because the sport has changed over the years.

“It used to be a real friendly thing, where all the swimmers would go out with each other and interact before and after the race,” Schmidt said.

“Now it’s grown so much and become very nationalistic, so it’s like, everyone is expected to hang out only with people from their own country. . . . I don’t see the fun in that.”

And without fun, the experience isn’t quite so profitable.