AT A CROSSROADS

A street sign says, in big, black letters, “Dead End.”

This is where the darling of the 1996 Olympics can be found. There are swimming experts who would consider that Amanda Beard’s career. Beard laughed at the suggestion.

The street may a dead end, but her career hasn’t reached one. She is eagerly anticipating the Olympic trials, Aug. 9-16 in Indianapolis.

Four years ago, Beard was the first 14-year-old to make the U.S. Olympic swim team in 20 years. She won a gold and two silvers, and she toted a large teddy bear around the pool deck, the media in tow.

Beard is older now, and wiser. Stuffed animals are out. Tattoos--she has two--and body piercings--a tongue stud--are in.

She heads into the trials as a memory. A silver medalist in the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke in Atlanta, she was ranked 23rd and 26th in the world the following year, and continued to free-fall. People started asking what happened to her as a swimmer. So she took a sabbatical, then decided those questions didn’t need to be answered.

“Oh, I’m the underdog going into the trials,” Beard said. “That’s the way I like to go in. I think people are going to look at me and be like, ‘I don’t know what she’s going to do.’ I just want to knock the socks off people, but who knows what I can do? The trials are a crazy event.”

What worries her most on this particular day is not the trials. Not her comeback. Not whether she has what it takes to compete against the world’s best swimmers.

It’s the heat. The air conditioner is broken at the Tucson house she rents with two other Arizona students. The temperature is well over 100 degrees.

“The repair man won’t be here until tomorrow,” Beard said. “And we’re dying.”

The heat may be getting to Beard, but not the pressure. She remains cool about what could happen in Indianapolis.

“Of course I’ll be disappointed if I don’t make the Olympic team,” Beard said. “But I don’t think it’s going to be some life-altering thing. My life is going to go on. I’m going to continue doing what I love, which is swimming.

“As long as I go in there and put in my best effort, then I’m going to walk away being happy and satisfied with what I did.”

*

Beard clicked her tongue stud against her teeth as she sat on the couch, in front of a fan that provided little relief from the heat. She is 18 now and says she has no use for the large teddy bear she lugged around Atlanta.

“That teddy bear definitely got a lot of attention,” Beard said. “I got teased a lot about it . . . a lot. You can check the house, there isn’t one stuffed animal.”

The Irvine High graduate was forced to put away childish things.

“Between age 14 and 18, there are a lot of things going on in a young person’s life,” said Dan Beard, her father. “I’m real pleased with the lady she has grown up to be.

“She handled it quite well. There certainly were trying times for her. She was highly recognizable and suddenly had a number of demands placed on her.”

All of which seems to dissipate in the heat. If this is exile, it’s self-imposed. She will be a sophomore at Arizona this fall and decided to remain in Tucson this summer to train.

“I love it here,” Beard said. “I wasn’t put on a throne or anything like that and that’s just the way I like it.”

She slipped into Southern California two weeks ago for the Janet Evans Invitational. Beard, bothered by tendinitis in her knees, finished sixth in the 200 breaststroke in 2 minutes 34.84 seconds, and seventh in the 100 breaststroke in 1:13.47.

“That was a weird meet for her, because she was just coming off the trouble with her knees and hadn’t been swimming as much,” said Greg Rhodenbaugh, the Arizona assistant coach who trains Beard. “Her timing wasn’t very good. We get her timing back, she will do well at the trials.”

The favorites in the breaststroke are 16-year-old Megan Quann--the national record-holder in the 100--and Kristy Kowal, making the 100 and 200 breaststroke possibly the most competitive events at the trials.

Beard finished second in the 200 breaststroke and fourth in the 100 breaststroke at the NCAA championships in March. Kowal, who swims for Georgia, won both races.

Beard entered the 1996 trials as the favorite. Her star burned like a nova after the Olympics. Two years later, she was ranked 35th in the world in the 100 breaststroke and 53rd in the 200.

The prevailing explanation: She grew up. The skinny 14-year-old on the medal stand in 1996 became a young adult, growing six inches and gaining 35 pounds.

“It affects a kid a lot when they start to mature physically,” said Irvine Novaquatics Coach Dave Salo, who trained Beard prior to this year. “When they experience any change, getting a little taller, a little heavier, it alters their mechanics.”

Making the adjustments is hard. Doing it while others stare and whisper nearly broke Beard.

“You have to get used to all that extra stuff in the water,” she said. “You kind of feel awkward.

“What people don’t understand is that you can’t be at this peak your whole life. You get worn out. You have weaknesses. You have to figure out how to deal with your weaknesses and make your weaknesses stronger.”

Beard emerged from that void to finish second in the 100 and 200 breaststrokes at the 1999 spring nationals. She set the national short-course record in the 100 breaststroke last December.

“A lot of people wrote Amanda off,” Rhodenbaugh said. “After last winter, people are looking over their shoulders and saying, ‘Whoa, here comes Amanda.’

“Sometimes I wonder what we’re doing with our swimmers, thrusting them into international competition so young. That’s a lot of pressure to deal with. I can’t think of too many girl swimmers who have had that success and come back. Amanda has done a great job of handling that pressure.”

Said Beard: “You can’t let things beat you. Then where are you going to be?”

*

Beard sits up, laughs and looks around her living room. There is nothing from the 1996 Olympics. No posters. No souvenirs. No photos. . . . especially no photos.

“No, we have the Gladiator,” Beard said, pointing to the movie poster of actor Russell Crowe on the wall. “Because he’s gorgeous.”

But nothing from the Olympics.

“I don’t want to have that stuff around because I would get sick of me,” Beard said.

Someday, she said, she’ll open those boxes and stroll down memory lane. For now, however, that road is closed for repairs.

The details from 1996 are fuzzy.

“It was four years ago and it seems like I was so young then,” Beard said. “I’m so old now.”

Even before the ’96 Games started, Beard was in demand. Oprah’s people called . . . and were turned down.

“We made a pact that Amanda wouldn’t do any appearances the last month before the Olympics,” said Gayle Beard, her mother. “Oprah’s people were very persistent and it was Oprah. But we stuck to our pact.”

In Atlanta, Beard lived up to the hype. She chased South Africa’s Penny Heyns to the wall in the 100 and 200 breaststroke, finishing second twice. Heyns set the world record in the 100, just touching out Beard, who set the American record. Beard won a gold medal as a member of the 400 medley relay.

Her youthful enthusiasm made Beard a natural for television. NBC had her pegged as a story before the Games began. Images of Beard hugging her stuffed animal were flashed across TV screens. Tales of marking pen fights with other swimmers made good copy.

For Beard, it’s now all a blur.

“I remember little bits and pieces, like it was a dream and I just woke up,” she said. “You remember little things and more comes back to you throughout the day. I keep getting little different things popping into my head.

“I could deal with everything. A lot of it just blew right over me. I guess I was a little naive.”

Beard slipped out of Atlanta early and went with friends to her grandparents’ house in Washington state.

All Beard wanted was to be a normal teenager, to hang out with her friends at fast-food restaurants and shopping malls. She managed that, but there was no way she could ever be a face in the crowd again.

She appeared on Jay Leno’s show, turned down other talk shows and met Dennis Rodman. Corporations called with endorsement deals, and personal appearance requests rolled in.

“Everybody wanted to take their own little piece,” Beard said. “I tried to do as much stuff as I could. It was kind of nice that people wanted to know what was going on in my life or with my swimming career. As long as I didn’t feel like I was being too overwhelmed.”

That feeling came when Beard was honored by the City of Irvine. The crush of fans outside city hall became too much and Beard, crying, was rushed away.

“As a parent, you want to put your child in a cocoon,” Dan Beard said. “There were a lot of calls and a huge amount of mail, some of which were a little concerning. The Irvine police were very good about it, doing extra drive-bys and chatting with us about security.”

Against this backdrop, Beard began to struggle in the pool.

“I wasn’t doing the best of times, or what I thought people wanted to see me do,” Beard said. “All those things tore me apart. I didn’t like swimming. I almost hated it and I didn’t want to do it anymore.”

She walked away in 1997.

“It started with a lot of excuses about not going to the pool,” Gayle Beard said. “Then she told me that it was hard having people watch her and expect her to do something great every time she got in the pool.

“I told her, if this was it, that she had nothing to regret, she had achieved greatness in her swimming. My priority was for her to be a happy person.”

For three months, the only time Beard got in the water was to go surfing. Salo would drop by the house and she would visit him at the pool, but they never talked about swimming.

“I could go away for the weekend with friends and not worry about missing workouts,” Beard said. “I could sleep in on Saturday mornings. It was fun.

“Then I started to get really bored. I would come home from school and would just sit there and watch TV. The days would go by so fast and I realized that I wasn’t doing anything productive.

“I realized that I did like to swim and it is fun if you make it fun. And it was a lot better exercise than sitting on the couch.”

*

It is after 1 p.m. and the temperature is still climbing. The fan isn’t helping.

Another good reason to get to the pool. Beard has a 2 p.m. workout. But these days she doesn’t have to search for reasons to train.

“The biggest things in my life are family and friends,” Beard said. “Swimming is something I do to fill up my time. Whatever happens at the trials, my life is not going to stop.”

Or reach a dead end.