SWIMMING : Camp Treatment Miffs Biondi

Five-time Olympic gold medalist Matt Biondi is among those swimmers not impressed with the Pan Pacific Games training camp, although he has not filed a protest with U.S. Swimming Inc., the governing body of the sport. He believes the camp, which began on Aug. 12 and ended Tuesday in Minneapolis, was too long.

“Two meetings a day, being away from home in a hotel, it’s not my ideal situation,” said Biondi who holds the world record in the 100-meter freestyle.

“And it is not just the camp. It is the whole way they approach world record-holders. They want the good things, the world records, and they want our leadership as team captains, but they don’t treat us like we are special, unique.

“It is no coincidence Tom (Jager, 50-meter freestyle world record-holder) and I have been in trouble with them for three years, and now Melvin (Stewart) and Mike (Barrowman, other world record-holders who have taken exception to the camp), are in trouble. They treat us the same as they treat 14-year-old girls, but we deserve more because we’ve done more. Right now, I’m just training and waiting another year and then I’m out.

“It’s really too bad because swimming has been great for me and I’ve been good for swimming, and yet everything between me and the national team has been friction. I’m tired of playing the political game and going before the board of review. I didn’t want to fight the camp. I’ll do what they want me to do. I’m tired of trying to fight them.”

Stewart and Barrowman won their fight when national team director Dennis Pursley reversed a board of review decision and allowed them to miss the first four days of the camp so they could compete in the U.S. national meet at Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Aug. 13.

Stewart and Barrowman wanted an extra opportunity, along with the Pan Pacific Games in Edmonton, Canada, Thursday through Sunday, to lower their world records in the 200-meter butterfly and 200-meter breaststroke, respectively.

Barrowman lowered his mark at Ft. Lauderdale, but Stewart missed. Barrowman’s time of 2:10.60 beat his previous mark of 2:11.23. Stewart won in 1:56.69, but that was a second off his record time.

A few weeks ago, Eric Diehl was running a 103-degree fever and suffering from a severe case of strep throat. He lost 11 pounds and missed a week of high-altitude training with his Mission Viejo teammates in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Still, Diehl was determined to compete in the Pan American Games at Havana, although he feared that in his weakened condition he would not swim fast.

That’s why his 200-meter freestyle victory and his third place in the 400-meter freestyle in Cuba last week were so surprising. Not only did he edge Gustavo Borges of Brazil for the gold medal in the 200, but Diehl’s time of 1 minute 49.67 seconds is the ninth-fastest in the world this year.

Borges, a 1991 graduate of Bolles School, a prep school in Jacksonville, Fla., was a flicker behind in 1:49.74.

“I couldn’t tell who won at the end,” said Eric’s mother, Gaby Diehl, who watched the race on television at her Mission Viejo home.

Gaby was stunned by her son’s performance because of the results of his blood test. She learned last week that he has been suffering from Epstein-Barr Syndrome, a debilitating virus.

“He hasn’t felt good for a few months,” Gaby said. “He’s been so tired, but he’s not one to complain. I guess he just swam through it.”

Dee Brown, the 6-foot-3 distance freestyler from St. Louis, isn’t the only member of the Brown family who learned what it takes to leap from age-group swimming to the nationally ranked level at the National Junior Olympics West earlier this month at Mission Viejo.

Before posting qualifying times for the 1992 U.S. Olympic trials with victories in the 200-meter and 400-meter freestyles, Brown finished fourth in the 800-meter freestyle, 8.8 seconds off the Olympic trials qualifying time.

When Brown’s coach, Don Meier, called her father, Frank, to tell him the result, he noted that Dee might have made the qualifying time had she shaved the hair on her forearms and upper arms.

“Just stick your arm in a sink full of water and look at all the air bubbles,” Meier said. “That causes a lot of drag.”

Convinced, Frank gave his 12-year-old daughter permission to shave her arms, promising that he wouldn’t tell his wife, Dorothy, who opposed it.

It apparently did the trick. The next day, Meier called Frank Brown with the news of Dee’s victory.

Considering that Brown did not qualify for the Senior Nationals until the National Junior Olympics West, her performances last week in the Senior Nationals at Ft. Lauderdale, were impressive. In the 200-meter freestyle, she placed third in 2:02.60, and in the 400-meter freestyle, she was fourth in 4:17.46. Both swims were faster than her efforts at Mission Viejo.

Swimming Notes

Megan Oesting, the Pan American Games silver medalist in the 100-meter freestyle, is UCLA’s top incoming freshman. Oesting, of Mercer Island, Wash., heads a recruiting class that is ranked No. 2 nationally by Taper and Shave newsletter, behind Stanford. Natalie Norberg of Arcadia, a gold medalist on the U.S. women’s Pan American Games record-setting 800 freestyle relay team, and Mary Petry of Diamond Bar are also part of a freshman class that Bruin Coach Cyndi Gallagher describes as her best yet.

Rancho Bernardo’s Lars Jorgensen, winner of the 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle events in last week’s U.S. Nationals, will not return for his senior year at USC. A 1988 Olympian in the 1,500 freestyle, Jorgensen did not live up to that status as a Trojan. He plans to sit out the year to prepare with his coach and father, Niels, for the U.S. Olympic trials and finish his education at an another school.

Paul Bergen has returned to coaching after a three-year hiatus. Bergen, who took over at Napa Swim Club, formerly coached Tracy Caulkins at Nashville, Tenn., and was one of Canada’s most successful coaches at Etobicoke, a suburb of Toronto.