National Championship Entices Olympians Van Dyken, Dolan

Olympic gold medalists Amy Van Dyken and Tom Dolan--seemingly fresh off the Wheaties box and banquet circuit--are set to resurface at the biggest meet since Atlanta, the Phillips 66 National Swimming Championships at Nashville, starting today through Aug. 1.

Van Dyken won four gold medals in Atlanta, the most ever by an American woman at one Olympic Games. She only recently resumed serious training, and went 25.61 seconds in the 50-meter freestyle last month at a meet in Santa Clara. Her winning time at that distance in the Olympics was 24.87, which was an American record.

Other noted Olympians joining Van Dyken and Dolan at the Nashville competition--which also serves as the selection meet for the 1998 World Championships, the Pan Pacific Championships next month in Japan and the upcoming World University Games--are Amanda Beard of Irvine, Brooke Bennett, Gary Hall Jr., Brad Bridgewater and Beth Botsford.

Among the top local swimmers entered are Chad Carvin of Laguna Hills (who won four individual titles at the 1997 spring nationals), Jennifer Parmenter of Granada Hills, Kristine Quance of Northridge, Lenny Krayzelburg of USC, Lindsay Benko of USC, and 12-year-old Carly Geehr of Pasadena, who has been breaking Beard’s age-group breaststroke records.

Quance probably will be the most active swimmer at Nashville. She said she plans to compete in seven events.

As for Hall, he has kept a higher profile outside the pool, engaging in a recent war of words with rival Alexander Popov, who beat Hall in two tight races in the 50- and 100-meter freestyle at the Olympics.

At the 1996 Olympic trials, Hall attracted a lot of attention when he wore brown leather pants on the pool deck before one of those races. Those pants, by the way, are history.

“I was doing one of those David Lee Roth flying splits things--they ripped right down the middle,” Hall said in a U.S. Swimming Internet interview last week.

“It was very embarrassing.”