His Quest Isn’t Just Improbable, It’s All Wet : Olympics: Whale trainer Chris Barlow, who emigrated from Great Britain six years ago, seeks gold as a U.S. kayaker.

Land of opportunity? Coming to America 5 1/2 years ago offered a sea of opportunity to Olympic kayaker Chris Barlow--a wet and wildly wonderful world, and he’s having a whale of a time living in it.

If only Barlow could learn to communicate better with his co-workers, he would be a shoo-in for an Olympic gold medal.

Imagine the technical and strategic tips a two-ton killer whale could pass along to a 6-foot, 180-pound kayaker. With Corky--or even Baby Shamu--in his corner, the other shells would barely get wet by the time he finished.

Barlow, 30, works as a whale trainer at Sea World. It is only coincidence that Anheuser-Busch owns the aquatic theme park and is a U.S. Olympic team sponsor.

“Did I mention Sea World’s Olympic job opportunity program?” Barlow asked during a phone interview from the Olympic training center in Lake Placid, N.Y. “They’ve been great, very supportive. I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing without their assistance.”

Funny thing is, when Barlow emigrated from Great Britain in November 1986, becoming a whale trainer at Sea World was the second farthest thing from his imagination. The farthest was competing for the U.S. kayak team in the Barcelona Olympics.

Upon moving to San Diego, Barlow knew only slightly more about competitive kayaking than killer whales or Sea World, which was nothing.

“I’d never even heard of Sea World let alone dreamed of becoming a trainer,” Barlow said.

Two circumstances curtailed his early Olympic possibilities: By his own admission, he was a terrible kayaker; and by the admission standards of the International Olympic Organizing Committee, he wasn’t a U.S. citizen.

Working at Sea World--a fluke job opportunity if there ever was one--enabled Barlow to have “the world’s greatest job” and a shot at Olympic glory.

“Sometimes I have to remind myself, they’re actually paying me to do this job,” he said. “On top of that, they’ve made it possible for me to go to the Olympics.”

It doesn’t figure, but Barlow was an economics major at London University. After earning his degree, he wore business suits, not wet suits, to work for three years.

The few inklings Barlow had about the underwater world came from his wife, Gerry, who was a marine biologist.

They moved to San Diego in search of . . . “We had no idea,” Barlow said. “It just seemed like a nice place to go.”

Less than a week upon arrival, Barlow saw a classified ad in the newspaper for an animal behaviorist at Sea World.

Barlow’s only apparent qualification was that he had been a rugby player in England, but even he figured that was not the type of animal behaviorist they were hoping to find.

Barlow: “The (advertisement) said, ‘Must be at ease in front of a large audience, be able to swim and have a science degree.’ ”

Barlow could swim. He applied.

“I didn’t really think much of it because I didn’t have the degree,” Barlow said. “That was my wife’s area of expertise.”

Naturally, he got the job. Gerry wound up in business.

She is a sales executive for a local office-cleaning business, which happens to be opening an international branch office in Barcelona, Spain, this week.

“What a stroke of luck, huh?” Barlow joked. “She being there at the same time as me? You would almost believe she pulled a few strings.”

As for Barlow’s luck: “I’d like to say being a whale trainer is a dream come true, but I never really knew a job like that existed. I don’t think I would have looked for something like that even had I known there was something like that.

“And the strange thing was, that was the first and only time they’ve ever advertised for animal trainers. Most times, they have a long list of applicants, or they train someone already at the park. I don’t know why they they decided to advertise at that time, and I have no idea why they hired me.”

Training to be a trainer was arduous, but Barlow eventually worked his way from the dolphin lagoon to sea otters and sea lions and finally killer whales.

“It’s not a job you can learn from watching a video or reading a manual,” he said. “You have to experience it.”

Shortly after getting his job, Barlow applied for U.S. citizenship, which he obtained in 1990.

The Olympics still were beyond his imagination.

French kayaker Philipe Baccara, a bronze medalist in the 1984 Olympics and a three-time world champion, is responsible for igniting those flames when he moved to San Diego and began training with Barlow.

“In Great Britain, I wasn’t that good,” Barlow said. “The combination of meeting Philipe and being in San Diego was the key. Philipe helped me a great deal.”

Soon, Barlow made a name for himself in the sport, which made its Olympic debut in 1936.

In last year’s world championships in Paris, his four-man kayak took seventh at 1,000 meters and eighth at 500 meters. In the same two events, respectively, he and his teammates were second and third at last year’s Pan-American Games in Cuba.

In April, he made the 10-man Olympic team with a good showing at the Olympic kayak trials in Raleigh, N.C. Three other San Diegans--Patrick Richardson, Greg Jordan and Stein Jorgenson--did not make the team but finished in the top 20.

On July 11, Barlow and teammates Mark Hamilton (Costa Mesa), Mike Herbert (Rogers, Ark.) and Terry Kent (Rochester, N.Y.) won a 1,000-meter race-off against another four-man kayak to earn the right to represent the United States in Barcelona. In Olympic kayaking, there is only one entry per country per event.

Barlow feels good about his Olympic chances. He says he has advantages in that his job requires him to maintain top physical condition, and he has learned a thing or two from the world’s natural paddlers.

“Those sort of training techniques that I learned at Sea World have helped me tremendously in my personal training in kayaking.”

The key, as it is in animal training, is positive reinforcement, Barlow says.

“Would you try to train a killer whale with negative reinforcement?

“I look for the good and the positive in everything I do as opposed to dwelling on the negative. It seems to work extremely well,” he said.

Concentration, patience and the will to see things through, essential in kayaking and Barlow’s strengths, are qualities he attributes to working with killer whales. “Usually, when working with animals, people think you have to be so patient with them because they’re so slow in learning,” he said. “Nine times out of 10, it’s patience with yourself because you’re not picking the right method of training. Usually, when communication breaks down, it’s our fault, not theirs.”

So what is it like to be hauled deep into a huge salt-water tank by the ocean’s top predator only to emerge and be catapulted 30 feet into the air like a circus performer shot out of a cannon?

“It’s difficult to put into words,” said Barlow, who tried anyway. “If you were a surfer, it would be like the biggest, best wave you ever rode. It sends shivers down your spine every time you do it. It’s awe-inspiring. Words just don’t do it justice.”