SWIMMING : Olympic Trials Disrupt Collegiate Season

No college sport is more affected by the Olympic trials than swimming. Although only the top two swimmers in each event make the U.S. Olympic team, dozens qualify in each event for the trials, which will be held March 1-6 at Indianapolis.

Most of those swimmers are collegians whose NCAA season will be turned topsy-turvy, since the trials are being held for the first time during the collegiate season and because the trials take precedence over most collegiate aspirations.

Muddying the waters even more is a new NCAA rule that limits supervised training to 20 hours a week and the unusually fast qualifying standards for the NCAA Division I championships in late March.

The standards are so fast that most swimmers will not make them until they have rested and shaved their body hair for the Olympic trials. But most college coaches don’t want to wait that long to determine their NCAA qualifiers.

The coaches also don’t want to jeopardize their swimmers’ chances of making the Olympic team by asking them to rest and shave during the season. If they swim their fastest in January or February, they may not be able to peak again for the trials.

Pacific 10 men’s coaches are trying to get around that by encouraging their swimmers to post those fast times in late November, then train hard until mid-February. That’s why the conference championship meet was moved from early March to Nov. 24-26, at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach.

The NCAA, which pays expenses for all competitors at the national meet, established the rapid time standards as a cost-cutting move. A maximum of 230 women and 270 men will be allowed to qualify. Last season, 343 men and 273 women qualified.

“By making the meet so small they are taking incentive away from the kids who want to improve themselves and go on to the national level,” USC women’s Coach Darrell Fick said. “We’d be willing to pay for the extra kids to go.”

Only a few swimmers will make the time in each event so a set of slower standards, called consideration standards, will be used to fill the heats.

Swimmers who qualify in one event under the stiffer standards are eligible to swim in other events, provided they have posted consideration times in the other events and that those times are among the fastest in the field. Women’s events will include 24-28 swimmers, men’s 28-32.

The uncertainty can be unsettling, swimmers taking time away from training to rest and post faster times, and expensive. Coaches cannot buy cheap, advance-purchase tickets because they won’t know how many of their swimmers are competing until the last minute when the fields are announced.

The biggest shock of the 1988 Olympic trials was Pablo Morales’ inability to make the U.S. team. Morales, the world record-holder in the 100-meter butterfly and the American record-holder in the 200-meter butterfly, finished third in both events.

He retired on the spot, enrolled in law school at Cornell, but couldn’t get forget the disappointment.

Determined to try again, Morales began training on his own last summer for the 1992 trials. Six weeks ago, he made his comeback official when he started working out at Stanford, where he won a record 11 NCAA individual titles from 1984-87.

“This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in my professional life,” said Cardinal Coach Skip Kenney. “Is there a better role model? He makes every one of us better.”

At the U.S. Open at Minneapolis, Nov. 29-Dec. 1, Morales will shoot for the Olympic trials qualifying time of 55.59 in the 100 butterfly.

The only swimmer to have broken 54 seconds in that event, Morales still holds the world record of 52.84, which he set in 1986.

The question is, does he have enough time to return to form?

“That is the only problem,” Kenney said. “He has everything else. The determination, the strength, and his kick is still great.”

Matt Biondi got off to a slow start in his preparation for the trials. When hundreds of Olympic candidates started heavy training in September, he was sidelined by tendinitis in both shoulders. At one point he could not lift his arms.

“I felt like the train was leaving the station and I was stuck,” said Biondi who developed the condition after loading and stacking five cords of wood.

A regimen of physical therapy, medication, kicking and sprint training, has minimized the pain.

“This could be a blessing in disguise,” Biondi said. “The last two years, I’ve trained very hard and at the end of the year I couldn’t get up on top of the water. My body doesn’t recover as well as it used to.”

At a recent meet between noncollegiate members of the U.S. national team and USC, Biondi won the 50 freestyle in 23.37 and the 100 freestyle in 51.54.

“At this stage of the game he looks right on the path toward making this (Olympic) team,” U.S. men’s Coach Joe Bernal said.

Janet Evans of Placentia and Kristine Quance of Northridge turned in several impressive times at the U.S.-USC meet. Without anyone to push her--which is usually the case--Evans clocked a 8:34.56 in the 800 freestyle and a 4:13.22 in the 400 freestyle. Quance went 1:12.29 in the 100 breaststroke and 2:34.93 in the 200 breaststroke.

“Kristine is swimming really well this early in the season and Janet’s 800 is good, considering she went 8:35.00 in mid-June for a mid-August taper,” Doug Ingram, U.S. women’s coach, said.

Evans, who is training six hours a day, would have been better off swimming the 800 during the men’s 1,500 freestyle.

“I would have loved that,” she said. “I could have gone faster, but you’ve got to be able to swim fast in any situation.”

Swimming Notes

Mike Barrowman of Potomac, Md., won an unprecedented third consecutive swimmer-of-the-year award from U.S. Swimming based on his two world-record performances in the 200-meter breaststroke. . . . Melvin Stewart of Las Vegas earned the Phillips Performance Award for his 200 butterfly world record and defeat of Michael Gross in the World Championships. . . . California Capital Aquatics Coach Mike Hastings was given the highest award in swimming, the U.S. Swimming Award. Among Hastings’ swimmers in his 31 years of coaching: Debbie Meyer, John Naber, Joe and Dave Bottom and current star Summer Sanders.

Defending NCAA men’s and women’s champion Texas met 1990 men’s and women’s runner-up Stanford recently at Palo Alto, and the Cardinal emerged with both victories. In the men’s meet, Stanford won 142-96 with three first-place finishes by 100 backstroke world record-holder Jeff Rouse. Sanders won three events in leading the women to a 174-126 triumph.

Dan Veatch’s retirement was greatly exaggerated at the Pan American Games. After careful consideration, the 200 backstroker decided to continue through the Olympic year. “I feel I will have a greater sense of accomplishment trying and failing than not trying at all,” Veatch said.

Top-ranked U.S. 100 butterflyer Brian Alderman of Santa Barbara will try to make the team despite a torn ligament in his knee. Alderman, who suffered the injury playing beach volleyball in August, plans to undergo surgery after the trials or the Games.