BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : A LONG JOURNEY, MADE FOR NOTHING

Imagine you are a 15-year-old from Los Angeles and you have qualified for the Olympics. You reach the deck of the swimming pool and before the race begins, you are disqualified for a minor infraction.

That happened Tuesday to Raymond Anthony Papa.

Papa, coached by USC assistant Ed Bartcsh, was competing in the first heat of the 200-meter backstroke early Tuesday morning. He jumped into the pool to prepare for the start--backstrokers begin in the water--waded several meters away from the wall and, upon returning to the wall, was disqualified.

The reason? Papa was told that he delayed the start by not returning to the wall immediately after jumping in.

“When he dove in, his goggles bobbed up,” Bartcsh said. “He fixed them out in the pool instead of coming back to the wall. That’s why they DQed him.”

The disqualification seemed frivolous because:

--Papa was swimming in the first heat, made up largely of athletes who had barely qualified and had little chance of reaching the final.

--Several swimmers, including Melvin Stewart of the United States in the 100-meter butterfly, have been guilty of intentional false starts, delaying races, and have not been penalized.

“It’s probably because I took too much time, or maybe because I’m a nobody,” Papa said. “And some of the others who did the same thing were somebodies.”

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.