BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 5 : A Stroke of Excellence : Swimming: Barrowman wins 200-meter breaststroke with world record to help the United States redeem itself.

There had to be someone on this U.S. Olympic swimming team who wasn’t too young or too old, too aggressive or too timid, too frightened or too lonesome. Someone who wouldn’t swim, lose, explain all the reasons why it happened and why “it’s not important to win a gold medal, just to swim your best.” But it was getting late in the week.

So U.S. men’s Coach Eddie Reese looked up Mike Barrowman on Wednesday at the Olympic village.

“You’ve been the U.S. swimmer of the year three times,” Barrowman recalled Reese saying. “And when the U.S. team is not performing as well as it should, you’ve been able to come out and make a statement in the past. This might be a real appropriate time for you to do that.”

So, Barrowman won the gold medal Wednesday night in the 200-meter breaststroke, broke his world record with a time of 2 minutes 10.16 seconds, had some tears on the victory stand, carried a little American flag, waved to his friends in the crowd and--perhaps best of all--owned up to the team-wide disappointment that so many others had denied.

“I wasn’t really concerned about setting a world record,” Barrowman said. “The only important thing in the Olympic Games is that you win. I’m hoping that this will spark everyone else, get the guys moving.”

This, after more than three days, during which U.S. swimmers have swum short of expectations and retreated into a foxhole. They have 15 medals, more than twice as many as any other country, but only four individual golds and only one of those by the much-promoted women’s team. All of which is nothing to walk into traffic over. But the swimmers have complained that everybody else just doesn’t get it.

“I think swimming is held up to higher standards than other sports,” U.S. freestyler Shaun Jordan said.

Women’s relay gold medalist Dara Torres said, “We know what our goals are, and they’re not set by the media.”

Barrowman put himself above that. He swam as the favorite and won. He broke the 200-meter breaststroke record for the sixth time in three years and finished more than a second clear of the field.

Maybe it had an effect and maybe it didn’t. But in the race immediately after Barrowman’s, Anita Nall, 16, won a silver in the 100-meter breaststroke. Nall had finished third Monday night in the 200 breaststroke, in which she holds the world record.

And in the night’s final event, the United States won the men’s 400-meter freestyle relay, which it has never lost at the Olympics. Matt Biondi, who finished fifth in the 100 freestyle Tuesday, gave the United States the lead and Tom Jager and Jon Olsen held off 100-meter champion Alexandre Popov of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

“We watched Mike’s swim in the ready room before the relay,” Jager said. “We knew we had our work cut out for us.”

Crissy Ahmann-Leighton took a silver in the women’s 100-meter butterfly behind Qian Hong, who won China’s second gold medal.

But the night was Barrowman’s. He reaffirmed his domination of an event that is not as glamorous as the freestyle or the butterfly. He proved himself tougher than the surroundings or the expectations, which did not happen in 1988, when Barrowman was fourth in Seoul.

“This is the Olympic Games, it’s a big thing,” Barrowman said. “I was a rookie in Seoul, and I didn’t know what was going on.”

Barrowman is 23 but seems much older. He swam fast in the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials and then had nothing left for the Games. This year his preparation was made nearly impossible because his father was gravely ill in a hospital. So he sandbagged the trials, swimming behind Rocque Santos and taking second place.

Wednesday, though, he became the first American to set a world record at the Olympics since 1976. Barrowman started conservatively, but still led at every turn, increasing the margin as the race progressed.

“He swam the race perfectly,” said his coach, Jozsef Nagy, a Hungarian living in Washington, D.C. “He’s been preparing a year for just this race.”

So he has.

“July 29th is all I’ve been thinking about for a very long time,” Barrowman said.

The difference between him and so many others who have fallen ever so short at these Games is a level of concentration that they apparently have not approached. He has spent a week here making sure not to walk around the Olympic village too much, making sure to bring his own music to the pool, Bruce Springsteen and an old Pat Benatar tune called “All Fired Up,” that he played at the ’88 trials.

And Wednesday night he promised to do something else. Whenever he has finished second or third, Nagy has insisted that he wear the bronze or silver medal to bed that night.

“Tonight,” Barrowman said after his race, “my coach is going to wear the gold medal to bed.”

Swimming Medalists

MEN (200 breaststroke)

GOLD: Mike Barrowman (United States)

SILVER: Norbert Rozsa (Hungary)

BRONZE: Nick Gillingham (Britain)

(400 freestyle)

GOLD: Evgueni Sadovyi (CIS)

SILVER: Kieren Perkins (Australia)

BRONZE: Anders Holmertz (Sweden)

(400 freestyle relay)

GOLD: United States

SILVER: CIS

BRONZE: Germany

WOMEN (100 breaststroke)

GOLD: Elena Roudkovskaia (CIS)

SILVER: Anita Nall (United States)

BRONZE: Samantha Riley (Australia)

(100 butterfly)

GOLD: Qian Hong (China)

SILVER: Crissy Ahmann-Leighton (U.S.)

BRONZE: Catherine Plewinski (France)