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Thompson's ease brings results

Swimmer with 5 golds in relays gets second shot at a gold of her own.

By JOHN ROMANO

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 15, 2000

INDIANAPOLIS -- For all that she has done, Jenny Thompson is known best for what she has not done.

She has dominated world championship and Pan Pacific meets. She has held American and world records. She has five Olympic gold medals. How can you quarrel with that?

Somehow, we have managed. Thompson's five golds have been won in relays. She has never won an individual Olympic event. She has been the ultimate team player in an individual sport.

Thompson left the Olympic trials four years ago admittedly devastated after failing to qualify for an individual event. She has returned to the trials this week, acting for all the world like a woman who knows she is on the verge of something special.

"I'm more confident and more at ease with who I am," Thompson said

She also is a better swimmer.

Thompson followed up her victory in the 100- meter butterfly over the weekend by winning the 100 freestyle Monday night, breaking her American record in 54.07 seconds.

"She really is not completely wrapped up in how fast she swims," said U.S. Olympic team coach Richard Quick. "That is not her label as a person or a woman. She is a valuable person in her own mind if she finishes dead last in this meet, and that is a huge (change). Her self-worth is not wrapped up in whether she wins or loses a race. And when that happens, you have a freedom to perform."

Thompson performed brilliantly Monday in the most star-saturated event of the trials. She passed Stanford teammate Dara Torres just after the turn and then held off late challenges from Amy Van Dyken and Ashley Tappin.

"I felt in the last 25 meters of the fly, I got caught up in the emotion of the finish and didn't come in real well," Thompson said. "That's something I focused on when I was preparing mentally for this race. I'm really proud of the way I turned that around and maintained my composure in the last 25 of this race."

For a minute -- actually, it was just under a minute -- this group of competitors took swimming back from the teenage set. Thompson, Torres, Tappin and Van Dyken finished in that order and will return to the Olympics. Torres will go for the fourth time, Thompson the third, and Tappin and Van Dyken the second.

They are the Golden Girls, in age and accomplishment. In Lanes 3, 4, 5 and 6 were a combined 12 Olympic gold medals, two silver and one bronze. Those four swimmers also had an average age of 28.

Torres, 33, has swimsuits older than the swimmer who was in Lane 7. And that is not an exaggeration. Torres was an Olympic gold medalist in the summer of 1984. Miami's Christina Swindle was born later that year.

Of the nine fastest women in U.S. history in the 100 freestyle, six were in this race.

"This relay team is going to be awesome," said Van Dyken, who earned a spot seven months after shoulder surgery. "We really have the potential to break a world record."

Van Dyken has a reputation for trying to psyche out her opponents in the minutes before a race. She has been known to grunt, spit and stare in the ready room, where the swimmers gather minutes before walking to the pool deck.

Torres said the competitors pretty much kept to themselves before Monday's competition, although Tappin insinuated that Van Dyken may have tried some of her tactics.

"It's just plain silliness, and we will have nothing to do with that," said Tappin, who also had surgery in 1998.

Throughout the trials, Thompson and Torres have put on happy faces -- but usually while in separate rooms. They are teammates with the Stanford swim club but have not trained together in eight months.

It is not that they dislike each other. Torres actually credits Thompson for helping her get back into swimming last year.

But when your life revolves around a single prize and your neighbor wants to beat you to it, a privacy fence is not a bad idea.

"If you look at all the relationships on all the teams, you would see some different levels of stress," said Quick, who coaches both swimmers at Stanford. "With Jenny and Dara, there was so much publicity about it. They are such prominent names, it added to the pressure. I think it made it much harder for both of them to perform."

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