Cardinal and Gold? : Stanford Has a Rich Selection of Olympic Swimmers With Six Taking Different Stories to Barcelona

Ted Knapp, Stanford’s assistant swimming coach, seemed to be asking for everyone when he sidled up to a deGuerre pool maintenance man recently and asked: “What are you putting in the water?”

What indeed?

What mysterious compound enabled Stanford and coaches Richard Quick and Skip Kenney to win the women’s and men’s NCAA championships and place Summer Sanders, Jeff Rouse, Jenny Thompson, Lea Loveless, Pablo Morales and Angie Wester-Krieg on the U.S. Olympic team?

Sanders, a two-time NCAA swimmer of the year, and Rouse, a world record-holder, were thought to be safe bets, although there really is no such thing at the U.S. Olympic trials.

Thompson and Loveless were in the hunt, but so were half a dozen others in their respective events, the freestyle sprints and backstroke.

Butterfly swimmers Wester-Krieg, a 27-year-old tax accountant, and Morales, who came out of retirement last summer, were the longest of longshots.

The worst thing that can happen is that 10 years from now , a kid is sitting on a porch with an iced tea saying, “If only I’d done this or known that . “ --Skip Kenney

It is one thing to stay in a sport because you’re on top. It is quite another if you’ve never stood on the victory stand, qualified for an international event or been supported by commercial endorsements.

Angie Wester-Krieg hung on because she loves to train and she believed down deep that she could make an Olympic team.

Thirty-fourth in the 1980 trials, sixth in the ’84 trials, 16th in the ’88 trials, it would have seemed natural for her to retire after ’88.

“It wasn’t like I got out of the pool and said, ‘I’m psyched for ‘92,’ ” Wester-Krieg acknowledges.

Instead, she left her coach of six years, San Jose State’s Jack Mutimer, and began training under the direction of her husband, Peter, the coach at West Coast Aquatics.

“I did well enough to get that little flame . . . to go faster,” Wester-Krieg said. “Every six months we added a little more.”

By March of 1990, the couple realized that Angie could progress no further outside a team environment. Quick graciously allowed her to train with the Cardinal and she placed third at the 1991 spring nationals.

Four months later, Wester-Krieg won two silver medals at the Pan American Games in Havana.

Suddenly, her Olympic dream did not seem so far-fetched. And now she has a lane for the 200-meter butterfly at Barcelona.

Here, an athlete isn’t put on a pedestal and worshiped. It doesn’t happen at Stanford and that’s very nice. --Jeff Rouse

At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Pablo Morales won silver medals in the 100 butterfly and 200 individual medley and was the butterflyer on the gold-medal winning medley relay.

In 1987, he ended his NCAA career at Stanford with an unprecedented 11 individual titles and three team championships.

Going into the 1988 trials, Morales held the world record in the 100 butterfly and American records in the 200 butterfly and 200 individual medley.

But in the biggest upset in swimming trials history, he missed making the team, finishing third in the butterfly events--one place shy of a berth--and 12th in the medley.

He retired and enrolled in law school at Cornell.

“I’d really reconciled myself to my career,” Morales said. “I felt ’88 was a natural conclusion.”

Morales was looking forward to his third year of law school when the idea of returning to competition crept into his mind.

“I don’t know exactly what brought me back,” he said. “But part of the experience I accumulated over the years is the satisfaction from performing at a peak level in an arena in which the seven others on the blocks all have the same dream of being the best in the world.

“It is that experience that we all strive for that has always been inside me. As I drew closer to trials, it was within me, not a burning flame, but something I wanted to do.”

Morales still had his good training habits, his butterfly technique and his competitiveness. What had not survived three years away from the pool, though, was the conditioning level built over 15 years.

Morales, 27, learned almost immediately that he could not train the way he had before.

“I would swim the first workout and be competitive and then I’d be shot the rest of the week,” Morales said. “I realized if you don’t have a whole lot of time, it doesn’t make sense to go all out and spend the rest of the week recovering. So I worked to a threshold without exceeding it. It’s difficult to balance.”

Occasionally, Kenney had to make Morales get out of the pool.

“The key was protecting an older body from injury,” Morales said. “Skip was sensitive to that and in many cases he protected me from myself. It’s kept me fresh and healthy and my attitude positive.”

What surprised me about Richard and the group was that when I was tired from work , I wouldn’t go in saying , “I’m going to train great today . “ But by the end of practice, I did. It’s something about the way he presents it. He truly believes what he’s saying and he truly believes in the athletes, and that makes you believe in yourself.

--Angie Wester-Krieg

Lea Loveless isn’t supposed to be here.

After a sub-par club season as a high school senior, Loveless, a native New Yorker, was not offered a full scholarship by Quick.

Stung, she went to the University of Florida.

“I thought (Florida Coach) Randy (Reese) was worth it,” she said. “I thought he could get me to the Olympics. I could double-major and go to a more prestigious institution for my masters’ degree.”

Her plan fell apart when Reese was forced to resign.

With some apprehension about Quick’s opinion of her abilities, she transferred to Stanford.

“For the first month, I was swimming OK, but Richard and I weren’t connecting,” Loveless said. “Finally, we had a meeting and I was open about my anxiety and my concerns. He said, ‘You need to trust me.’ ”

So Loveless accepted Quick’s program and went from an also-swam to a berth on the U.S. team in the 100 and the 200 backstroke.

“I think the critical aspect of training is mental,” she said. “You can’t doubt. You can’t get to the taper (rest period) and say, ‘Maybe we should have done more or rested less or rested more.’

“We put it all on Richard’s shoulders. At the same time we’re responsible. When he says ‘Go!’ you go.”

This program breeds success. It has become a self - perpetuating process.

--Pablo Morales

Jenny Thompson curtailed her mountain climbing and roller-blading, but she still took a risk enrolling at Stanford in an Olympic year.

No other candidate for the women’s team changed coaches seven months before the trials.

Thompson’s coach, Mike Paratto of Seacoast Aquatics in Dover, N.H., had suggested that she delay her college enrollment a year. But Thompson put her trust in Quick, believing that she would benefit greatly from training with world-class swimmers.

“All the ingredients were here for me to be successful,” Thompson said. “When Richard was recruiting me, he said, ‘You can win gold medals if you come here.’ I guess I dreamed about it. I dreamed about it and hoped for it and worked toward it and it all worked out.”

It all worked out to 54.48 seconds, the time it took for Thompson to break East German Kristin Otto’s 1986 mark and become the first American woman since 1933 to hold the world record in the 100 freestyle.

Thompson continued her breakthrough at the trials, breaking the American record in the 50 freestyle and swimming a personal-best in the 200 freestyle.

Expectations will be high in Barcelona because she has the opportunity to win four medals, and a fifth if she is the top American in the 100 freestyle and, thus, the medley relay anchor.

“I think getting world and American records has given me the confidence to go faster and to face what I need to face,” she said.

I love working with Skip. Both programs feed off each other. I know I was as excited for Jeff Rouse and Pablo Morales making the team, and I hurt as much for Ray Carey and Derek Weatherford when they did not make it as I would for my own athletes because I see how hard they work and how much they care. --Richard Quick

Backstroker Jeff Rouse is an invisible man, and not only because 30% of his race is underwater.

At the Pan Pacific Championships in Edmonton, Canada, last August, Rouse, swimming the first leg of a relay, set a world record, smashing American David Berkoff’s 1988 mark of 54.51 with a 53.93.

Hurriedly, meet organizers named Rouse, 22, of Fredericksburg, Va., to share a performer-of-the-meet prize with Australian freestyler Kieren Perkins.

Then Rouse was snubbed again.

With few exceptions, his world record did not appear in U.S. newspapers because the Canadian wire service reporter had not realized that a swimmer can set a world record in a relay.

Seven months later, at a pre-Olympic trials news conference in Indianapolis, Rouse was virtually ignored as reporters flocked to Janet Evans, Matt Biondi, Summer Sanders, Melvin Stewart and Mike Barrowman.

“It’s weird,” Rouse said. “Sometimes I don’t think I get as much attention, other times I’m happy I don’t get it and other times I don’t need to feel like I’ve done something special.”

At the very least, Rouse will be prepared to be overlooked in Barcelona, where his main competitor, Spain’s Martin Zubero, is the host-country favorite.

“Either he’ll have the crowd behind him and he’ll swim out of his mind or it’ll be too much pressure for him,” Rouse said.

Although Zubero, the world record-holder in the 200 backstroke, is better known at that distance, Rouse is concerned about Zubero’s 100 backstroke.

“Up until now, it was Martin in the 200 and me in the 100 and we haven’t been able to touch each other,” Rouse said. “But now he’s closing in on me. I feel like I’m in a defensive position.”

The ultimate threat is the clock.

“All I can do is swim my best time and if someone beats that--unless I have a major screw-up and I obviously could have gone faster--I won’t be upset,” Rouse said. “I know that sounds like a cliche, but I honestly feel that’s the way to swim.”

In practice, the clock, and world-class backstroking teammates Brian Retterer and Weatherford, create the pressure.

“It doesn’t matter whether I’m having a good day or a bad day,” Rouse said. “Someone there is going to push me.”

I get aggravated a lot because it hurts so much and Richard is yelling in my ear. I can look back and smile, but I’m not smiling in workouts.

--Jenny Thompson

Quick can be heard from a parking lot a quarter of a mile away. Briskly, he strides up and down the deck, offering instruction and encouragement.

Jenny Thompson, in Lane 1, can’t escape him. When she turns her head to breathe, he is in her face, demanding more.

More speed. More intensity. A bigger kick. A stroke that cuts the water.

Thompson, resting now at the wall, is drained. She hesitates, then as Quick begins to plead, she pushes off.

The 1988 Olympic head coach, Quick was selected as a women’s assistant for the ’92 Games. But Quick bucked convention when he gave up his position last fall.

Saying he wanted to be “in the fire,” Quick decided to compete with other coaches for the assistant coaching berths awarded to those who had placed the most swimmers on the Olympic team.

It was a gamble, particularly because the surest bet for the team, ’88 triple gold medalist Janet Evans, had left Stanford, citing differences with Quick.

“If you want to call it a comeback, you can,” Quick said. “We got better because we decided we wanted a different experience at the end. The coach decided that and the athletes decided that and we had enough faith to pull it off.

“It was the team, not Janet. I was disappointed she decided to leave, but it was not the bottom of the valley. This year wasn’t ‘I’ll show you.’ It was concern for the athletes on this team.”

Along with the NCAA title and the five berths on the U.S. team--including Quick’s--the Cardinal broke one world and five American records.

It seems like this year, people made an effort to overcome adversity instead of allowing it. We wouldn’t let someone go off or be divisive. We would tell them , “Maybe you need to support your teammates in the pool or you need to come to team functions . “ It is a tribute to the seniors and Dede Trimble, our captain.” --Lea Loveless

Five 1,500s?

Skip Kenney is dishing it out again.

“I don’t understand anything about the pain in the sport,” Kenney said. “Richard will laugh at some of my sets and say, ‘That’s a set you never swam.’ ”

Kenney never swam, period, but he learned in Vietnam that the body is more capable than people think.

“You must unlock your mind,” Kenney said. “I think that’s how people break world records.”

Kenney is relentless in his attempt to maximize the blue-chip potential that arrives at Stanford each year.

“They have great talent,” he says. “How do you get talent to surface?”

In this age of swimming treadmills, lactic acid testing and stroke rate analyses, Kenney sounds like a mystic.

“There’s no science,” he said. “It is an art. The key is communicating, looking into their eyes and their heart and finding out how they feel.”