SWIMMING / U.S. OLYMPIC TRIALS : Evans, Biondi Back on the Team for Barcelona

Teen-agers Royce Sharp and Janie Wagstaff set American records and Matt Biondi and Janet Evans, the stars of the 1988 Olympic Games, gained berths on the ’92 team Tuesday night in the U.S. Olympic swimming trials at the Indiana University Natatorium.

Sharp, 19, of Peddie Aquatics in Hightstown, N.J., broke the American record of his idol, Rick Carey, with a 1-minute 58.66-second clocking in the 200-meter backstroke.

Carey’s 1:58.86, set in the 1984 trials, was the oldest American men’s record.

Wagstaff, 17, of the Kansas City (Kan.) Blazers, lowered her American mark in the 100 backstroke with a 1:00.84, slightly faster than the 1:01.10 she set last August in the Pan Pacific Championships

Biondi and Evans, the only individual gold medalists for the United States in the ’88 Games, earned berths on the ’92 team after being denied earlier this week.

Biondi, who had a disappointing sixth-place finish in Monday’s 100 butterfly, won the 100 freestyle in 49.31, edging the fast-closing Jon Olsen by .11 seconds.

Biondi’s time was slower than his preliminary time of 49.17 and his 1988 world record of 48.42, but his primary concern was reaching the wall first.

“I had some doubts after the fly,” he said. “I was kind of scared that I wouldn’t make the team.”

Evans, who could not crack the top two spots in Sunday’s 400 individual medley or Monday’s 200 freestyle, was relieved when she won the 400 freestyle in 4:09.47.

“After the 400 I.M., I looked at what I’ve been through, what I’ve sacrificed leaving Stanford and all my friends and going to Texas and then I thought, what if I don’t make it?” Evans said. “Is it all worth it? But I believed it would work out in the end.”

Evans’ time was well off her 1988 world record of 4:03.85 and shy of her best times the past three years, but she did shave more than three seconds off her preliminary swim.

Sharp’s coach, Chris Martin, described Sharp as the most intense trainer he has ever coached.

“I think he can go faster,” Martin said. “When you are going for the Olympic team, you go for first place first.”

Wagstaff felt the same way, but her race couldn’t start soon enough.

With her pulse racing at 200 beats per minute and sleep an impossibility, Janie woke her mother, Starr, at midnight Monday and asked her to come to her hotel room.

Mother and daughter talked and Janie, finally, caught a few hours of sleep.

“I wasn’t laying awake because I thought I was going to lose,” Wagstaff said. “I was laying there because I wanted to go.”

Swimming Notes

Erika Hansen of Texas took the second berth in the 400 freestyle with a 4:11.30. . . . By virtue of their respective third- and fourth-place finishes in the 100 freestyle, Joey Hudepohl, 18, and former UCLA All-American Tom Jager, 27, earned berths on the 400 freestyle relay team. Although he is known primarily for the 50 freestyle, Jager proved that he can go the longer distance. “They’ve been saying I can’t swim the 100 for ages,” Jager said. . . . Pasadena’s Joel Thomas is expected to be named as an alternate on the 400 freestyle relay team. Thomas finished sixth in the 100 in 50.50.

By making the team, Matt Biondi earned the chance to become the first U.S. swimmer to win gold medals in three Olympics. In 1984, Biondi won gold in the 400 freestyle relay and in ‘88, he won the 50 and 100 freestyles and was part of three gold-medal winning relay teams. . . . Beth Barr, a 1988 Olympian, did not compete in the 100 backstroke because of a slow-healing rib operation. Barr had made a courageous comeback from an accident in 1989 in which her right arm was shattered when she was thrown from a horse.

Dan Veatch announced his retirement after finishing fifth in the 200 backstroke. Veatch, 26, was a 1988 Olympian and captain of the 1991 Pan American team. He missed making the ’84 Olympic team by one place.