A Potpourri of Times as Meet Comes to Close

For those who were expecting fast times or extremely slow times from the U.S. Olympic team, the three-day Speedo Invitational at the Phoenix Swim Club offered a bit of both.

If his family waited until the evening finals to watch hometown star sprinter Gary Hall Jr., they would have missed him. Hall failed to qualify for the finals Friday in the 50-meter freestyle and finished a desultory 38th in the preliminaries Sunday in the 100 freestyle with a time of 54.48 seconds.

But Hall, who qualified for both events in the Olympics, has a knack of showing up in the major meets and going through the motions in lesser ones. Even at the nationals in February, he failed to reach the finals in the 100.

A lower back ailment prevented 400 individual medley world record holder Tom Dolan from competing after he pulled a muscle making his entrance into the water for the start of the 200 freestyle Saturday.

With the Olympians being in the midst of heavy training--which usually does not yield excellent times--a couple of swimmers shattered that theory. Jeff Rouse turned in the fastest time in the world this year in the 100-meter backstroke on Saturday, and a day earlier, Amanda Beard recorded the third-fastest time of 1996 in the 100 breaststroke.

Beard on Sunday also won the 200 breaststroke in 2:30.43, defeating USC’s Kristine Quance by more than three seconds. The 800 freestyle featured a close race between Brooke Bennett and Janet Evans. Bennett won in 8:41.57, edging Evans at 8:42.56.

Other winners were Angel Martino (55.79) in the 100 freestyle, Stephen Clarke (50.44) in the 100 freestyle, Eric Wunderlich (2:17.53) in the 200 breaststroke, Misty Hyman (2:11.32) in the 200 butterfly, Tom Malchow (2:00.19) in the 200 butterfly and Carlton Bruner (15:37.08) in the 1500 freestyle.