Several Factors Working in Klein’s Favor : Diving trials: Format and competing first may help former Mission Viejo standout, who failed to qualify in 1988, make the Olympic team.

Four years of aiming for the Olympic trials culminate today for diver Krista Klein.

The 1986 Mission Viejo High graduate barely missed the 1988 trials. Now she is among the favorites to win one of two berths to represent the United States in the three-meter springboard when the trials begin today in Indianapolis.

“Krista is diving extremely well,” said Jim Stillson, her coach. “She looks better than she has ever looked in practice. She is really ready emotionally and physically to do a spectacular job.”

Julie Ovenhouse, the reigning one- and three-meter national champion, Wendy Lucero-Schayes, a nine-time national champion and 1988 Olympian, and Mary Ellen Clark are among Klein’s top rivals.

However, Klein, who won two Southern Section 4-A diving titles, predicts a wide-open competition.

“There’s always an underdog that comes out of the pack,” Klein said recently during a telephone interview from her home in Dallas. “You have to have two good days in a row.”

Several factors work to Klein’s advantage. One is the format. Unlike most competitions in which the scores from the first set of dives do not figure in the final standings, they will in this meet.

A similar system was used in the 1990 trials for the U.S. team in the world championships. Klein won that meet before finishing 10th at the world championships.

Klein’s event will be at the start of the five-day meet.

“It will be nice to get it over with and not have to sit through other competitions,” she said. “I’m going to be very excited watching my friends try to qualify for the Olympics in their events. It would add to my tension if I watched them and then had to compete.”

Klein sees “making her dives look easy and really effortless” as her strength, while Stillson lauded her work effort.

“I’ve worked with a lot of good kids, but Krista is as hard a worker as I’ve ever had,” he said. “She has a great deal of dedication and perseverance.”

For some athletes, the Olympic trials are well-named, in that they are really a trial and more pressure-packed than the Olympics. But Klein disagrees.

“It’s going to be a fun meet,” she said. “I’m excited about it. I’m trying to concentrate, but trying not to get too caught up in it. I’m trying to look at it as a great opportunity.”

The trials will also serve as a family reunion for Klein, whose family is one of the most involved in the sport. Her father, Dick, is “the voice of U.S. Diving,” after serving as the public address announcer for the 1984 Olympics and nearly every major event in this country. Her mother, Ida, is a diving coach and many-times masters national champion. Brothers Richard, Curt and Kevin were all two-time Southern Section titlists at Rolling Hills High.

Although Klein, 24, has been diving 17 years, these are her first Olympic trials. In 1988 when the top eight finishers from the Phillips 66 Outdoor Championships advanced to the trials, Klein was ninth. (This year, the top 12 from the championships qualified for the trials.)

“I just wish I had been able to go in 1988 to get the experience,” she said.

Klein has had many successes in the last four years. In 1991, she won one-meter and three-meter national championships and NCAA titles for Southern Methodist.

This year, she finished fourth on the three-meter and second on the one-meter in the national championships. (The one-meter is not an Olympic event.)

Regardless of how she fares this week, Klein plans on competing at the outdoor national championships in August at The Woodlands, Tex., completing a cycle. In 1981, that was the site of the Junior Olympic Championships, during which Klein won the first of her three age-group national titles. After that, she is uncertain of her future in the sport.

“I’m satisfied with what I’ve done,” Klein said. “I won’t be shattered and it won’t taint everything I’ve done if I don’t make the Olympics.”