BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 4 : Four Years Ago, It Was Different

Dagmar Hase has sprung a leak. The teardrops cascade down her face. She dabs at them with two fingers. It doesn’t help. Her eyes puddle up again. She backhands the moisture from her cheekbones and brushes back her shaggy blond hair. A song somewhere off in the distance keeps playing. Hase keeps crying.

The eyes of Janet Evans are clear. She is carrying flowers. On her way to the victory stand, she waves to familiar faces in the gallery. She looks much the same way she did that all-smiles summer day in Seoul, except for being four years older, two inches taller, seven pounds fuller and ethereally illuminated by sunshine, the Olympic swimming pool of South Korea not having been outdoors.

Two similar swimmers.

One 22. One nearly 21.

One coming apart. One composed.

It is an optical illusion, however. True emotion is not always worn on one’s sleeve, even by those attired in swimsuits. True emotion is sometimes disguised, hidden away by whatever means necessary or handy. It occasionally is even denied.

“No, I’m not crying,” Evans would maintain, a short while later. “I’m not crying.”

Her eyes said different.

Still, it is a poignancy of sport that often the winner is more overcome than the loser. More likely than not, the explanation for the condition on the winner’s pedestal of Dagmar Hase, an apprentice tourism guide from Magdeburg, Germany, is that this was no loser she defeated Tuesday for an Olympic gold medal, but rather it was a winner among winners, Janet Evans of Placentia, the reigning queen of chlorine, positively the woman to beat.

To outrace Evans is to outbox the champ, is to outfox the chessmaster, is to catch the great fish that has never been caught. Not since 1986 had anyone reached the finish line of a 400-meter freestyle race ahead of her. She was an apple-cheeked adolescent when she began outswimming women and she was a University of Texas assistant coach by the time someone finally got the better of her.

By how much? By this much: Flex your fingers into a claw. This was the margin by which Evans missed out on another Olympic gold medal. Hase beat her to the wall by a fingernail.

“I still have a world record. I still have an Olympic gold medal,” Evans said with justifiable pride. “I’ve been able to hang in there for four years. I don’t look at this with bitterness or resentment.”

Yet what made it even more painful, made true feelings even more difficult to camouflage, was that this was her race, Evans’ event, her bailiwick, the 400 freestyle, and it was a race she led for 398 meters. After a lap, she was comfortably ahead of the field. After 100 meters more, Evans was clearly in command, at 2:02.21 more than half a second beyond Hase, who had pulled away from everyone else.

It was a two-woman race. By the end of her next split, Evans was a full length in front. TV commentators were singing her praises. “This lady has not lost a thing in four years!” a British broadcaster sang out.

Only over the very last 50 meters did Hase make a move. Evans did not visibly slow down. It was the elongated German, 5 1/4 inches taller than the American, long arms churning, who suddenly seemed to torpedo. The wall was in sight when Hase came up even with Evans, shoulder to shoulder. They drove down the homestretch like Derby horses, heads bobbing, waves splashing. They lunged for the wall.

Hase’s arms were longer.

In the end, that was the only difference. Their final times were listed as 19/100ths of a second apart, but this was one of those crazy occasions when hundredths of a second seem too long. Evans has certainly done better than her 4:07.37, and neither her time nor Hase’s would have taken home a medal from Seoul, but for the winner it was a personal best, and for Janet it was one hell of an effort.

“It’s not like it’s the end of the world,” Evans said.

She could have become the first woman since Martha Norelius in 1928 to win the 400 freestyle back to back, but Janet Evans had nothing to prove and another medal to gain. This one is silver, but it shines as brightly in the sunlight.