Quance Sinks Despair With Stirring Effort : Swimming: Personal best in 200-meter breaststroke at Pan Pacific Championships follows disappointing time in 400 individual medley.

Before Kristine Quance could become the fourth-fastest 200-meter breaststroker in history, she had to overcome the despair of a race gone wrong 48 hours earlier in the Pan Pacific Championships.

Quance, 16, of Northridge, emerged from the Kinsmen Aquatic Centre pool after the 400-meter individual medley Friday in a daze.

Her face paled, her heart pounded and she could barely keep her balance.

Quance’s effort had produced a silver medal, her first in international swimming, but she wasn’t thinking about her place on the victory stand. All that mattered was what always matters to swimmers: her time, and it was disappointing.

The scoreboard showed 4 minutes 45.40 seconds--four seconds behind gold medalist Summer Sanders of Roseville, Calif., and almost one second off Quance’s best time.

The performance was not surprising. Quance couldn’t sleep or eat before the race and she missed her family, her friends from Granada Hills High, and the counsel of her coach, Bud McAllister of Calabasas-based CLASS Aquatics.

“I was really nervous,” Quance said. “I tried to sleep and then I woke up too soon and I couldn’t get back to sleep because I was afraid I’d oversleep.”

Quance’s prospects did not appear strong for the 200 breaststroke. It seemed as if she had fallen into the pattern of several of her high school-aged teammates on the U.S. national team--struggling in their first international meet. But something unexpected happened between Quance’s shaky swim and her performance last Sunday: She did not allow one to affect the other.

With the poise of an Olympic veteran, Quance summoned all of her competitive instincts and knocked a remarkable 2.3 seconds off her best time in the 200-meter breaststroke. With her triumph in 2:27.55, she positioned herself as the co-favorite, along with Anita Nall, to win the gold medal in the 200 breaststroke in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.

Nall, who set the American record of 2:27.08 last April, will not enter the Olympic year with as much momentum. She clocked a 2:34.66 in the preliminaries and did not make the championship finals.

Quance’s effort capped a 13-month period of spectacular improvement. A year ago at the U.S. Olympic Festival, she finished in 2:36.72, good for third place. A month later, she turned in a 2:33.52 at the U.S. Nationals for another bronze medal.

By April, she was down to 2:29.88.

When she posted a 2:30.65 in Sunday’s preliminaries, just off her best time, it served as a confidence builder. “It was pretty easy in the morning,” Quance said. “I just tried to hold (control) my stroke. I was shocked when I looked at the clock.”

The bigger shock came in the final, when Quance reached the halfway point in 1:11.53, only a few tenths slower than her personal best in the 100 breaststroke. “I was surprised,” she said. “I didn’t expect to go out that fast.

“I think it helped that I had that first swim, the I.M., out of the way. A lot of people told me that the 400 I.M. has nothing to do with the 200 breaststroke.”

After the first race, U.S. women’s Coach Mark Schubert told her that she had 15 minutes to “mourn” her performance and then she had to start cheering for her teammates.

Quance also benefited from several telephone conversations with McAllister.

He reminded her that her recent sinus infection played a role, as did her eagerness. In the first half of the individual medley, she was 3.5 seconds ahead of her personal-best pace. As a result, she didn’t have enough left for the last part of the race. “She hates to lose,” McAllister said. “She was mad that she was second because she hates to be second.”

It is understandable considering Quance was second in three events at the U.S. Spring Nationals in April. At the Olympic Trials, March 1-6 in Indianapolis, she can afford to be second. However, any finish below that will mean watching the Olympic Games on television.

“We’re hoping she breaks 4:40.00 in March,” McAllister said. “No matter what anyone else does. We’ve got to plan like that because you’re looking at (Hungary’s) Kristina Egerszegi who has gone 4:39.78 and (China’s) Li Lin who has gone 4:41.00.”

In the 200 breaststroke, McAllister believes Quance can go under 2:26.00. That would eclipse Silke Horner’s world record of 2:26.71. Quance is prepared for the quest. She took a summer-school class to lighten her classroom load this fall and the new year-round school schedule will provide her with a vacation in December to focus on training.

She knows the disappointment of work that does not pay off, but more importantly, she knows not to dwell on it.