Rose Won’t Retire Again Until After the Olympics

In April, Gabrielle Rose was retired from swimming. She was burnt out, frazzled, the love of her sport gone. Unable to give it her all, Rose compiled a resume and set up job interviews at Silicon Valley dot-coms.

She was a new Stanford grad with a degree in American Studies and a new life to start.

Five months later, Rose is going to the Olympics instead. The job can wait.

Saturday night, Rose, 22, swimming for the Irvine Novaquatics, became the unlikeliest qualifier yet. A day after she almost scratched from the event, Rose finished second in the 200-meter individual medley in a time of 2 minutes 14.95 seconds, behind winner Cristina Teuscher (2:13.36) but ahead of everybody else.

Rose let out a shriek of disbelief and then hugged anyone she could find. Dave Salo, the Novaquatics coach, slapped his head with his hands and stumbled backward, as stunned as Rose and just as excited.

In May, Rose had called Salo and asked if she could train at Heritage Park with Salo and the Novas.

She had gone to Colorado Springs to visit her boyfriend, Mike Lambert, who is a member of the U.S. men’s volleyball team. “I was watching Mike and the guys,” Rose said, “and I thought that it is so noble to be working for this goal and I started to get my desire back. I started to think I wanted to swim again.”

Rose competed in the 1996 Olympics for Brazil. Her mother, Regina, is Brazilian and when Gabrielle had been visiting relatives nine years ago, Rose began swimming with the Brazilian national team. She was the only woman on that 1996 Brazilian team--”Ten guys and me,” she said--and she didn’t get out of prelims in the 200 IM.

In 1997 Rose, from Memphis, went to Stanford and decided it was too hard to commute to Brazil in the summers so she changed her swimming citizenship to the United States. “Plus, it is the ultimate challenge to make the U.S. Olympic team,” Rose said. “I wanted that challenge.”

But after this school year, where she was captain of the Stanford team, Rose was exhausted and unhappy with swimming. “I thought I owed it to myself and to the sport to quit,” she said. “I don’t think it’s fair if your heart isn’t in something to keep doing it.”

Rose came to the Novaquatics because, she said, she admired Salo as a coach last summer when Salo coached the U.S. Pan American Games team and Rose competed. “I saw how much fun he made swimming and I talked to some people who said that Dave can make swimming fun every day,” Rose said.

When she arrived in Irvine in May, Salo said to Rose “100 days to the Olympics.”

Rose had decided to concentrate on the 200 freestyle because there are four relay spots available as well as two individual places.

On Friday morning, though, Rose finished a dismal 28th in the freestyle prelims. “I was, like, three seconds below what I had been swimming,” Rose said, “and I was really depressed. I almost didn’t want to swim the IM prelim.”

Salo convinced Rose to go for it. Half an hour later Rose sneaked into the semifinals, the 16th qualifier of 16. “I didn’t feel good in the water all day Friday,” Rose said, “but I got real psyched when Staciana [Stitts] swam so well. Our team was all feeding off each other.”

Rose qualified for the 200 IM finals, barely. She was seventh and had to swim in Lane 1 Saturday night. “I know people say nobody makes it out of Lane 1,” Rose said, “but I didn’t think much about it at all.”

Saturday morning Salo made some changes in Rose’s backstroke form because her backstroke splits had been terrible. He told Rose to keep her eye on Maddy Crippen in Lane 2. “Crippen has a good backstroke,” Salo said, “and I told Gabrielle that if she could stay close to Maddy on the backstroke, she could bring home a strong freestyle leg.”

The strategy worked. Perfectly.

As soon as she could after her race, Rose grabbed a cell phone and called Lambert in Colorado Springs. “Mike couldn’t believe it,” Rose said. “He kept screaming. Now we get to march together in the opening ceremonies.”

Notes

El Toro’s Kaitlin Sandeno qualified second for today’s 200-meter butterfly finals in a time of 2:11.24, just a little slower than her career-best of 2:10.80. Misty Hyman, 21, of Stanford, qualified first in 2:11.16. Sandeno, 17, already has won the 400 IM and earned a spot on the Olympic team. Sandeno was second in the 200 fly at Spring Nationals and her coach, Vic Riggs, says the high school senior-to-be has a good shot of earning a second swim at the Olympics. Irvine’s Jason Lezak was the No. 6 qualifier for the men’s 100 freestyle final. Lezak, 24, swam a 49.64, just off his career-best of 49.34. Brian Esway of the Novaquatics finished 38th in the prelims; Blaine Morgan of the Novaquatics was 60th; Derek Gibb of Newport Beach was 71st; Matt Zimmer of Costa Mesa and Team TYR was 86th; and Gered Doherty of the Novaquatics was 91st. Huntington Beach’s Steve West, 28, of Team TYR, finished 13th in the 200 breaststroke semifinals and failed to make the finals. Eliminated in the prelims was Daniel Kim (19th) and Billy Brown (43rd), both of the Novaquatics.