Sanders Swims to Memories : She Will Have Stories to Tell if She Finds Success in Barcelona

Summer Sanders skimmed over the water, pulling farther and farther ahead with each graceful backstroke. Abruptly, the rhythmic sound of her hand entering the water was replaced by a sharp thud.

Sanders’ head hit the wall.

The crowd gasped.

Few had ever seen a world champion imitate an 8-and-under swimmer.

“I was off in La-La Land,” Sanders acknowledged. “Granted, the sun was in my eyes, but no one else hit the wall. I wanted to laugh, but I had a 200 (-meter swim) left and that takes so much energy.”

Typically, Sanders saw the humor in her reverie.

If nothing else, the collision in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., makes for a humorous recollection, similar to the 130-foot bungee jump she made last summer in Australia.

A card-carrying optimist, Sanders expects all her tomorrows to be even more exciting than her todays.

Among her favorite expressions?

Think of the stories we’ll tell .

At the 25th Olympic Games, the stories could be about her.

The only member of the U.S. Olympic swim team to qualify in four individual events--100- and 200-meter butterfly, 200- and 400-meter individual medley--Sanders can win five medals if she defeats Crissy Ahmann-Leighton in the 100 butterfly for a berth on the medley relay.

With an easy laugh and an unwavering smile, Sanders, 19, of Roseville, Calif., deflects the pressures awaiting her in Barcelona.

“It’s funny,” she said. “People say, ‘You have a chance for five medals,’ and I laugh. I think about Matt (Biondi, winner of five gold medals in ‘88) and Mark Spitz (winner of seven gold medals in ‘72), and I laugh.

“How do you deal with it? People say it so many times you have to laugh. It’s just a story. They have no control over whether Matt gets five medals or whether I get any medals. It brings you back to the heart of swimming.”

The heart of swimming?

It is the joy Sanders feels when she soars above the water with the most efficient butterfly stroke since world record-holder Mary T. Meagher.

It is recalling, with a melodramatic flair, the fear Coach Richard Quick instills in her when he selects the workout from a stack of color coded cards in the predawn chill at Stanford’s deGuerre pool.

Because of Sanders’ sunny disposition, the depth of her commitment is not apparent until one sees her straining to meet time standards Quick demands for seven consecutive 50-meter butterflys on an interval only a few seconds slower than her best time.

Or until she dries off with an ice pack strapped to her aching shoulder.

Sanders will make no predictions for the Olympic Games, but with a serious tone she says: “I realize this is the ultimate meet. So many times I tell myself, ‘I’ve worked so hard for so many years.’ ”

More than anything Sanders wants to swim smart races.

“I need to know how fast to go out and how fast to bring it home,” she said. “I want to know that I gave my all--not only physically, but mentally.

“I’ll be doing a lot more thinking than I’ve done in past meets, and that will take pressure off.”

None of Sanders’ events requires more thinking than the 400 individual medley, a taxing sequence of 100 meters of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.

“There’s so much strategy involved in the I.M.,” Sanders said. “I feel like I’m a basketball coach, and it’s overtime and I’m trying to figure out a play.

“And it’s funny. When you get to freestyle it’s ‘Go like hell,’ whereas the other strokes are when to breathe and what to do about stroke rate.”

Sanders’ superior butterfly is almost a hindrance in the 400 medley because she tends to expend too much energy.

“I try to relax, but the first lap I feel invincible,” Sanders said. “It feels so good. Then later it hurts me.”

Her racehorse style takes its toll on the final, freestyle segment.

Unlike most medley swimmers, freestyle is Sanders’ weakest stroke, and the one she has worked obsessively toward improving.

“It’s there,” she said. “I just have to believe it.”

The most difficult aspect is jump-starting her legs after a breaststroke segment that requires an exhaustive kick.

Often, Sanders expounds on her dislike for the 400 medley and the pain she derives from it.

Before the 400 medley at the Pan Pacific Championships last summer in Edmonton, Canada, Sanders’ diatribe had fellow American Kristine Quance in stitches in the ready room.

That’s why it is startling to hear Sanders say, in all seriousness: “I’m looking forward to it. I feel like I have this good swim in me.”

Her motivation stems primarily from the lopsided pacing of her 400 medley at the U.S. Olympic trials last March.

On world-record pace after the breaststroke segment, Sanders needed a one-minute four-second freestyle leg to break East German Petra Schneider’s 1982 mark of 4:36.10.

But Sanders was drained.

She labored to finish the freestyle in 1:08.76, for a cumulative time of 4:40.79, enabling runner-up Erika Hansen to close the gap by almost six seconds.

Again, the unsinkable Sanders found humor at her own expense.

“I couldn’t believe the public address announcer,” she said. “He kept saying, ‘Please clear the pool.’ I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t see. So how could I get out?”

Determined to exit less painfully two weeks later in the NCAA championships, Sanders’ pacing was almost perfect.

She will need a similar performance to prevent Hungary’s Krisztina Egerszegi and China’s Lin Li from catching her in Barcelona.

Sanders’ freestyle will be nearly as crucial to her gold medal hopes in the 200 individual medley.

Li passed her down the stretch to win the 200 medley title at the 1991 World Championships, and in the ’88 Olympic trials, Sanders missed making the U.S. team by 0.27 of a second when she was caught by Mary Wayte and Whitney Hedgepeth.

Such threats are unlikely in the 200 butterfly.

Not only is the defending world champion the heavy favorite to win it, Sanders’ unorthodox breathing pattern could make it appear effortless.

As opposed to the vast majority of swimmers who breathe every other stroke or a combination of every stroke and every other stroke, Sanders apparently breathes every stroke.

That is, she comes up for air after every stroke.

But Sanders doesn’t open her mouth every time.

“Sometimes I don’t need to,” she said. “It’s just a rhythm thing. I lift up my head every time, but some times I don’t take a breath.

“I like to know I have the opportunity . . . that if I want a breath, I can take it.”

Sanders discovered this security quite by accident at a meet in Salinas, Calif., in the spring of 1989.

“I was cruising along, breathing every other stroke when I got a breath of water,” she recalls. “And then on the next breath . . . a mouthful of water again. And that scared me--no-breather drills at practice always freaked me out. So for the rest of the way I breathed every stroke.”

Neither Quick, nor Sanders’ age-group coach, Mike Hastings of California Capital, forced her to conform.

“It doesn’t slow her down,” Quick said.

A further tribute to Sanders’ unique talent is her emergence in the 100 butterfly.

She is one of only two medal contenders--along with Egerszegi--who is entered in such disparate distances: a 100 butterfly and a 400 medley.

The aerobic system changes dramatically in that 300-meter gap, and although Sanders’ best time this year (59.67 seconds) is second only to Ahmann-Leighton’s, the Chinese and the Japanese boast butterflyers in medal contention.

“The 100 is fun because I feel like a sprinter,” Sanders said. “But I don’t have a grasp for it. A lot of times I try to sprint, and I tighten up and flail.”

Sanders has a similar concern about her marketability since announcing May 12 that she will bypass her final two years of eligibility at Stanford to pursue commercial endorsements.

“I feel like I’m playing some kind of game,” Sanders said. “I made this decision. I’m taking a chance, and I don’t know if people will want me to work for them.”

At least her brother Trevor will be by her side on a post-Olympic swing through Europe and the United States.

“If things don’t work out, I’ll be off with my brother, so whatever happens it’ll be a learning experience,” Sanders said. “I’m excited, but I don’t know what to be excited about.”

Trevor, 22, and his sister are unusually close, a bond Trevor attributes to their parents’ divorce.

Together, they shuttled back and forth, every six months, between their parents’ homes.

Trevor could always put a smile on his kid sister’s face.

“He has this way of easing the tension by making me laugh,” Sanders said. “I always call him when I’m down.”

Lately, the talks have turned to marketing. Trevor is working with Summer’s agent, trying to secure endorsements.

Provided Summer wins a few gold medals, it could be an easy sell. She is a photographer’s dream, even before a race.

“You watch Summer and she has a big smile, while the other competitors are grim looking,” Trevor said. “She really enjoys swimming, and when you enjoy something, you show it.”

What you see with Sanders is what you get, according to Quick.

“I can tell you what the public sees is not an act,” he said. “It is the way she is most of the time. But like any 19-year-old or 29-year-old, you have good days and bad days. You get disappointed.

“She has all the emotions other people have, but she looks for the good in people and situations. She’s figured she’d rather be happy than sad, rather be lighthearted than worried.”

Sanders’ friends reinforce her temperament.

“I know who I’m comfortable with,” she said. “People like me. I know how I am--kind of a goofy person.”

Quance, struggling to describe the competitor who put her at ease in her first major race, finally bailed out: “She’s . . . just . . . Summer.”

Features in Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Sports Illustrated and Newsweek notwithstanding, Sanders is gratefully uncelebrated on a Stanford campus where three Pulitzer Prize winners, nine Nobel laureates and more than 10 Olympians roam.

“To all the people I’ve met once, it is no big deal,” Sanders said. “I mean I hang with Adam Keefe, and he’s going to the NBA. I don’t think of him differently, and I don’t think he sees me differently.”

It has been more difficult to be one of the gang since Sanders decided not to compete for NCAA champion Stanford, although she plans to return to classes after the fall quarter.

“I thought people would think I’d changed,” Sanders said. “So I wanted to prove I hadn’t changed, and then I realized that my true buddies will know.”

Sanders was particularly sensitive to the feelings of her best friend, fellow Olympian Lea Loveless.

“I wanted her to know I’ll be the same Summer,” Sanders said. “I’m still going to give her a bad time. I’m the same silly person.”

Sanders can’t help but look ahead.

Think of the stories she will tell.