Going for the GOLD . . . One Last Time

One early December morning before jet-set city’s car phones, faxes, pagers, and P.C.s were ringing, screeching, beeping and whirring, Janet Evans and a friend were beginning their daily four-mile training run near USC.

Evans was hours away from her first steaming cup of cafe latte, but she could run this route by rote.

Or so she thought, until she stumbled in a hollow in the pathway and crumpled to the ground.

“Oh, my god!” her friend said.

Evans was lying on the cold concrete, writhing in pain and wondering if her chances to make her third Olympics were over.

“I started to feel really dizzy and disoriented,” Evans said.

Later in the day, she learned it was nothing more than a bad ankle sprain. One more obstruction on the final lap of her remarkable 10-year career.

As Evans swims in her last U.S. Olympic trials, starting Wednesday at Indianapolis, she needs to discard a year’s worth of distractions if she hopes to reach Atlanta this summer.

She is trying to make the Olympic team in the 400- and 800-meter freestyle events, in which she holds world records and has won gold medals. She also is the world-record holder in the 1,500 free, which is not an Olympic event for women.

Despite the accomplishments, Evans, 24, has not swum close to her record times in years. In 1993, she swam the 400 in 4 minutes 5 seconds, more than a second slower than her record of 4:03.85. In ‘94, she swam 4:08. Last year, 4:10.

She failed to win a title in the 1995 U.S. summer nationals at Pasadena and had to abandon her goal of tying Tracy Caulkins’ record of 48 national victories. Her eight-year reign in the 800 was snapped by upstart Brooke Bennett, a Florida teenager who is primed to become America’s newest distance star.

Then, after the nationals, Evans had her tonsils removed and lost valuable training time.

“She was never healthy until five weeks after her operation,” said Mark Schubert, her coach.

Away from the pool, it wasn’t much easier. Her parents were involved in a highly publicized feud with Evans’ alma mater, El Dorado High, an Orange County school that proudly displays a picture of the Olympic champion in the gym.

The dispute centered on the El Dorado marching band, which practices at 7 a.m. on a football field a few yards from the Evans’ Placentia home. The family lost a court battle with the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. The situation became so ugly that some suggested removing Evans from the district’s hall of fame.

So what is it like to be Janet Evans?

“Harder than people think,” she said one rainy evening while walking in Pasadena. “Just a lot of expectations. It’s overwhelming being me because of that. How do real celebrities do it?

“Basically, I can walk down the street unnoticed. I’m another face in the crowd. [But] I still feel overwhelmed.”

At most meets, Evans has adoring youngsters tugging at her, asking for autographs. At a recent pre-trials meet at USC, she needed to discuss her race with Schubert when a girl started pestering her.

Evans gracefully gave an autograph and went back to her business.

“It’s still pretty cool, I think,” she said of the attention.

A few times, though, she has experienced the dark side of celebrity. After her success at Seoul where she won three gold medals, a man started sending Evans angry letters because she had not written to him personally. She sent the letters to authorities.

“Here I was coming out of Seoul, an innocent 16-year-old [who] thought the world was wonderfully nice,” Evans said. “And then this fan started writing me hate mail.”

She realized it was not a good idea to drive around Southern California with her vanity plates, “3Gold88.”

At the 1994 World Championships in Rome, a British man started following her around the pool area and had to be removed by security guards.

Yet, these encounters have not left her cynical. She still strives to be a role model, which was most evident after the sprained ankle.

Instead of panicking with the trials only two months away, Evans simply altered her training schedule. She quit running and tried not to kick as much as a distance swimmer preparing for her biggest meet in four years would. The result, Schubert said, is Evans’ upper body is as strong as it ever has been.

Relying on her arms to get through the arduous workouts demanded by Schubert, USC’s swim coach, Evans is hoping she still has the speed to get one of the two Olympic spots in the 400 and 800.

Her biggest challenge is expected to come from Bennett, but the 15-year-old from Plant City, Fla., is not the only teen ready to bounce Evans from Atlanta. Christina Teuscher of New Rochelle, N.Y., and Trina Jackson of Jacksonville, Fla., also loom as strong contenders.

“I don’t think Janet will go into the trials just to swim,” said Peter Banks, Bennett’s coach. “She would have hung up the suit and said she lost the drive.”

Much of the attention in the last year has been focused on Evans and Bennett because of a few choice words spoken last year at the Pan American Games in Argentina. Bennett, then 14, said Evans had avoided the competition because she was afraid of her.

“It taught me a lesson,” Bennett said. “I know it hurt her really bad. I never intended to hurt her feelings.”

Banks said he uses Evans as motivation for Bennett.

“I tell her, ‘You beat her, but you’re not as good as her,’ ” he said, referring to the gold medals and world records.

After defeating Evans at last summer’s nationals and Pan Pacific championships, Bennett emerged as the trials favorite. Evans had not been an underdog in a decade.

Losing, she said, was something of a relief.

“People saw me as a person who was almost immortal,” Evans said. “It took a lot of pressure off.”

With four gold medals and countless accolades, Evans did not need to spend the last four years proving anything. Still, she wanted to continue.

If she fails to earn an Olympic berth this time, so be it.

“I’ll move on with my life,” she said. “I love it but I can’t do it forever.”

Evans is not sure what’s next. She is considering law school, but also wants to live in New York City for a year or so.

She already is living in a spacious loft a la Manhattan. Except for some framed Olympic art posters, little evidence of her swimming life can be found inside.

But whatever happens, will happen.

“If it’s a question of will I not know what to do without getting up at 5 in the morning and going to workout, no I’ll be fine,” she said.

It sure seems that way.

In 10 years, Evans has experienced the vagaries of competition. She has gone from the wonder of winning three gold medals as a teenager in Seoul to the pressures of winning only a silver and gold in Barcelona to quitting.

When she returned four years ago, she vowed to enjoy the sport to its fullest and has been true to that credo.

“Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate my success more and more because I realize it really doesn’t come easy,” Evans said. “When I was a little girl, it was so easy. It’s harder and harder.”

If she placed second between 1988 and ‘92, she thought she was a failure. When she placed fifth in the 400 free at the 1994 World Championships, she was disappointed but not devastated.

“It was just a race, and in 10 years no one is going to remember,” Evans said. “I mean, I hardly remember it.”

But no one in swimming will forget Evans even if this week’s meet proves to be her last.

Schubert, who has been instrumental in helping her regain the joy, was pondering what will be lost. At the recent USC meet, the hard-boiled coach became sentimental.

“It was really sad,” he said. “I realized there are not going to be too many more meets where I get to coach Janet.”

He will miss the little things.

“If you ask her to do a specific time in practice, she will kill herself to do it,” Schubert said. “To be in her middle 20s and still training like she was a high school kid is pretty impressive.”

But that’s Evans. After spraining her ankle in December, she tried to get up immediately before falling back down.

“I thought I could complete the run,” she said.