Taking Heart : Chad Carvin Had Cardiomyopathy and Figured to Be Done With Swimming, but Rest Brings Recovery and a Comeback

His brilliant swimming career seemed long gone, but Chad Carvin was alive and he wouldn’t have to get involved in an agonizingly long wait for a heart transplant.

And if he couldn’t have swimming, well, there was the challenge of a new competitive hobby, mountain bike racing.

Those were the realities Carvin faced while he watched his friends and competitors reach Olympic glory last summer in Atlanta.

But now, against all medical odds, Carvin will return to the national swimming scene Wednesday at the Phillips 66 National Championships in Buffalo.

“It’s kind of miracle he’s still swimming,” said Carvin’s coach, Frank Busch of the University of Arizona.

“To put it all in perspective, my wife and I were talking--she’s a nurse practitioner--[and] guys like this are the ones waiting for heart transplants. He’s a very lucky guy.”

Carvin, 22, even struggles somewhat over the telephone from Tucson to find the words to explain his story.

“Oh yeah, I’m definitely lucky,” said Carvin of Laguna Hills. “From here on out, I don’t want to ever overlook anything. Maybe, before, I looked past stuff and had taken stuff for granted.”

That stopped in December 1995, when Carvin was found to have cardiomyopathy after a virus had worked its way into the left ventricle of his heart.

The diagnosis helped explain his fading strength, slowing times and sluggish workouts, which had led Carvin to despondency and an attempt to overdose on over-the-counter sleeping pills.

He was told by doctors to stop exercising and get complete bed rest. That ultimately enabled his heart wall to recover.

But while he was resting, he missed the Olympic trials, and swimming experts had thought he could make the U.S. team in at least three events.

And once Carvin resumed light workouts in the summer, Busch worried that the young swimmer might become dispirited again when the NCAA turned down multiple appeals to have him redshirted.

But Carvin was resolute. Though his workouts weren’t as hard as they used to be, he entered a meet in Tucson in July and his time of 3 minutes 55.61 seconds in the 400-meter freestyle made him the sixth-fastest American in 1996 and 33rd in the world.

He recently decided to travel to Buffalo because that meet is a selection meet for the 1997 Short Course World Championships in Goteborg, Sweden, April 17-20. Fourteen swimmers will be selected, and if Carvin wins the 200 freestyle--his best event--he goes to Sweden.

Busch said Carvin has an excellent chance to do well at Buffalo, given his experience at the top international levels of competition. In the 1995 summer nationals, Carvin won the 200 freestyle and was second in the 400 and 1,500 freestyles.

“I decided to go [to Buffalo], and I called my mom [Judie] in October,” Carvin said. “She supports me and she asked me if I’d like her to go. She thought I’d make it back.”

No matter what happens in Buffalo, Carvin is delighted to be in the pool again, making the most of the small things he never thought he would miss.

“What I enjoyed the most was getting in there and working out and being with my teammates,” he said. “They like to see me back.”

Said Busch: “Chad decided he still enjoys swimming and as long as his health holds up, he’ll continue. We certainly don’t take anything for granted.”

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Four 1996 Olympic gold medalists in individual events are expected to compete in Buffalo: Brooke Bennett, Beth Botsford, Brad Bridgewater and Tom Dolan.

Amanda Beard of Irvine, who won two silvers in individual events and a gold in a relay at the Olympics, has spent limited time in the water. She was held back after recent wrist surgery to remove a cyst, and said she has faced higher expectations since the Olympics.

“It kind of makes it harder,” said Beard, 15. “When I go to a meet, I feel like everyone is watching me, and if I don’t do good, then they’ll be saying, ‘Amanda Beard, what happened to her?’ Well, it’s not my fault.

” . . . This one meet, I was doing the 100 [-yard] breaststroke, and I hadn’t been in the water for about a month. They are watching me and I do about a 1:05. They’re like, ‘See?’ It was my first meet. So I feel like I’m part letting these people down when I don’t do good. I keep reminding myself it’s just one meet.”