BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 7 : On Last Day, Sanders Gets Her Victory : Swimming: She wins the 200-meter butterfly. Biondi ties all-time U.S. mark with 11th medal.

Olympic swimming is six days long, a deep breath held while the rest of the Games pump slowly into gear. Today it is over.

Mostly, American swimmers spent the week defending themselves against suggestions that they weren’t living up to expectations, or to all those fast times they swam at the U.S. trials in March.

Summer Sanders, a 19-year-old sophomore at Stanford, was among those most assailed. She swam four individual events and before Friday night had won a bronze medal and a silver medal. Never mind that she had been fast. Her teammates also were winning medals, but not all of them were gold. They had become a bristly bunch.

And then, right before Ron Karnaugh’s emotional swim in the men’s 200-meter individual medley, Sanders finally got her gold medal. She swam a personal best of 2:08.67 in the women’s 200-meter butterfly, then leaped from the pool, ran 20 meters across the blue rubber deck and shouted in delight to her parents seated above her.

“I touched the wall and I had so much energy,” she said later Friday night. “They wouldn’t even let me out of the pool in my lane, so I had to go to the side and then I guess I was just doing my own little triathlon. For sure, if I hadn’t won at least one gold, I’d be really bummed right now.

“I just know that people aren’t expecting me to do anything tomorrow. I can sleep late, I can go to events. You know what I’ve been dying for all week? The guys in the village have been eating these ice cream bars, like two at a time. And chocolate.” Her teammates threw candy bars at her from the seats after the race. She picked them up and squished them under the searing Barcelona sun. No matter.

Sanders taught her team a lesson. After greeting the crowd with a smile and a wave before each of her previous swims, she stared only at the pool this time. “My mean face,” she called it, adding: “I wasn’t swimming for anybody else but me today.”

Swimming as a team were backstroker Jeff Rouse, breaststroker Nelson Diebel, butterflyer Pablo Morales and freestyler Jon Olsen. They won the men’s 400-meter medley relay, the last swimming event of the Games. This was after an entirely different team that included Matt Biondi, who had been beaten by Olsen in the 100-meter freestyle, qualified in the morning. All eight got gold medals, which gave Biondi 11 Olympic medals, tying him with Mark Spitz and shooter Carl Osburn for the most in U.S. Olympic history.

“It feels a little anticlimactic right now,” Biondi said Friday night. “Because I didn’t swim in the (final).”

Was it difficult to swim in the morning?

“I’ve never done it before,” he said. “It was fun. I was telling all the guys stories in the ready room before the race.”

They won the last swimming gold medal of the Games, giving the U.S. team a total of 27 medals, including 11 gold. The Commonwealth of Independent States team, made up entirely of Russians, had 10 and six, and China had nine and five, respectively. Nine reigning world champions failed to win gold medals.

“We’re not going to win them all ever again,” said men’s Coach Eddie Reese of the University of Texas.

World record-holder Tamas Darnyi won the men’s 200 individual medley for his second gold medal, as Karnaugh faded to sixth, and Kristina Egerszegi, 17, of Hungary turned in a dominant performance in the women’s 200-meter backstroke. She was was the only swimmer to win three individual gold medals.

But it was Sanders’ night. She looked tired while earning her silver medal in the women’s 200-meter individual medley Thursday, and her college coach, Richard Quick, tried to inspire her Friday afternoon. “You swim butterfly longer, faster than anybody in the world,” he said.

But Quick knew--or thought he did--that Sanders had better be leading after the last turn or she would be finished. Friday night, Sanders was in third place, down by five meters, with 50 to swim.

And she won with a kick.

“I’ve never seen her win a race like that,” Quick said.

“Those last 10 meters,” Sanders said. “I definitely had my mean face on.”

Now, the pressure is gone.

“I felt like me and (gymnast) Kim Zmeskal were put in the same position, having to win so many gold medals,” Sanders said.

“People said five gold medals for me. After five months, you start to listen to that. But tonight I still thought that I could win one gold medal.”

Swimming Medalists

* MEN

(200-meter individual medley)

Gold: Tamas Darnyi (Hungary)

Silver: Greg Burgess (United States)

Bronze: Attila Czene (Hungary)

(1,500-meter freestyle)

Gold: Kieren Perkins (Australia)

Silver: Glen Housman (Australia)

Bronze: Joerg Hoffman (Germany)

(400-meter medley relay)

Gold: United States

Silver: CIS

Bronze: Canada

* WOMEN

(50-meter freestyle)

Gold: Yang Wenyi (China)

Silver: Zhuang Yong (China)

Bronze: Angel Martino (United States)

(200-meter butterfly)

Gold: Summer Sanders (United States)

Silver: Wang Xiouhong (China)

Bronze: Susan O’Neill (Australia)

(200-meter backstroke)

Gold: Kristina Egerszegi (Hungary)

Silver: Dagmar Hase (Germany)

Bronze: Nicole Stevenson (Australia)