Evans, Mission Viejo Pair Sparkle in Women’s 400-Meter Freestyle

Orange County was well-represented in the women’s 400-meter freestyle Tuesday in the U.S. Olympic trials at the Indiana University Natatorium. Janet Evans of Placentia won the event in 4 minutes 9.47 seconds and Lisa Jacob and April Diez of the Mission Viejo Nadadores were fifth and eighth, respectively, in times of 4:15.57 and 4:17.15.

Evans, who attended El Dorado High before her triple gold-medal-winning performance in the 1988 Olympic Games, felt more comfortable in the distance freestyle event than her earlier events. Evans, 20, failed to make the U.S. team in the 400 individual medley on Sunday and the 200 freestyle on Monday.

“It was hard the last two days,” Evans said. “People kept coming up to me and instead of saying ‘good job’ they were saying ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

“Lisa (Jacob) tried a fast pace,” said Mission Viejo Coach Terry Stoddard, who was pleased with Jacob’s aggressive attitude. “At least she went out after it.”

Diez swam slightly slower than her morning swim of 4:16.01.

In other results involving county swimmers: Sionainn Marcoux, 19, of Southern California Aquatics and Stanford, finished first in the consolation finals of the 400 freestyle with a 4:19.15. In the preliminaries, Marcoux was 14th in 4:20.68.

Mission Viejo’s Kathy Deibler finished 24th in the 400 freestyle with a preliminary time of 4:25.36. She swam the consolation final and posted a seventh-place time of 4:27.18.

And Greg Larson of Irvine and USC placed 26th in the 100 freestyle in 51.46.