Swimming / Tracy Dodds : A Busy Evans to Compete in Meet Beginning Today

Janet Evans, who took very little time off after the Olympics in Seoul last September before getting back into her incredible training regimen, somehow managed to train, handle a crush of requests for appearances, parades and award dinners and still compete for Placentia’s El Dorado High School and her Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team, knocking off distance swim records all along the way.

She’s tough over the long haul.

Today, just one day after her high school graduation ceremonies, Evans is opening her long-course season in the Swim Meet of Champions at Mission Viejo. Evans will swim the 800 at 4 p.m. and will compete every day in the meet that continues through Sunday.

Evans also plans to swim the 200-meter freestyle, 200-meter backstroke, 200-meter breaststroke, 200-meter butterfly, 200-meter individual medley, 400-meter individual medley and the 400-meter freestyle.

Finals start at 5 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Evans, who will be attending Stanford in the fall and swimming there under the direction of Richard Quick, former Olympic coach and former women’s coach at the University of Texas, has been working with Don Wagner, the new coach of her Fullerton Aquatics team.

Wagner, a former assistant at the University of Arizona, replaced Bud McAllister, who coached Evans to three Olympic gold medals before moving on to a club in Orlando, Fla.

In January, Evans broke the 1,650-yard freestyle record that had been set by Olympian Tiffany Cohen in 1983. She lowered it from 15 minutes 46.54 seconds to 15:44.98. And in March, at the Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming Short Course Nationals in Chapel Hill, N.C., she broke Cohen’s American record in the 1,000-yard freestyle. She lowered that record from 9:28.32 to 9:25.49.

It may take her a meet or two to get up to speed in this long-course season, but Evans is planning to compete in all the major meets. She is one of the stars that U.S. Swimming is planning to use both in Tokyo, at the Pan Pacific meet, and in Atlanta, against the Soviets, just days later.

If anyone can do it . . .

The annual meet at Mission Viejo has recently acquired Chrysler as a sponsor, which could mean that it will again be able to pay travel expenses for the top caliber swimmers who used to be attracted to the meet when it was sponsored by Seventeen magazine.

Most of the swimmers on the West Coast are competing either in the Santa Clara meet July 7-9 or in the Los Angeles Invitational July 13-16. East Coast swimmers will be competing in the Charlotte Ultra Swim Invitational June 22-25.

The Los Angeles Invitational, which will be held at USC, has drawn not only Evans, but also Olympian Sylvia Poll of Costa Rica. USC Olympians Dave Wharton and Dan Jorgensen are also scheduled to compete.

The L.A. Invitational will be televised by TBS.

All of the early summer meets are tuneups for the Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming Long Course National Championships, which also will be held at USC, July 31-Aug. 4.

Matt Biondi is not ready to say when he plans to race again, but there is little doubt that he will. Somehow, somewhere and no doubt for some profit, Biondi will sprint against his old nemesis, Tom Jager.

If Biondi chooses to skip the long-course national meet and, therefore, the Pan Pacific meet, it is likely that he will swim a match race with Jager--a prospect that no doubt would attract network television.

Biondi quit the national water polo team last week just before reporting to the Bahamas for the filming of a CBS project in which, of course, he swims with the dolphins he has grown to love.

Biondi has not raced since his final Olympic event last September. He swam the butterfly leg for the 400-meter medley relay that won gold, and then announced that he would be putting all of his athletic efforts into making the national water polo team.

Working with the water polo team has kept him in shape, and he would certainly be of value to the U.S. team--especially on the relays--if he did decide to qualify for the Pan Pacific meet. As Jeff Dimond of U.S. Swimming put it: “If Matt decides to swim again, we’ll be turning cartwheels.”

Pat Hines will defend her title as women’s champion in the United States Ten Mile Swim in this year’s ocean race along a course that runs between Huntington Beach and Seal Beach. Hines is using the race to gain attention for her quest to make an endurance swim an Olympic event.

She would like to see a 10-mile swim become a demonstration event in 1992 and a medal event by 1996. According to Hines, U.S. Swimming and its masters program have submitted the event for Olympic consideration.

“Endurance swimming deserves Olympic status,” she says. “It is an international sport, it demands the highest levels of skill and training, and it is incredibly exciting.”

Swimming Notes

The United States sent a team of swimmers to the Soviet Union for a meet at Tallinn June 2-4 and the young women fared surprisingly well. They won nine gold medals, seven silver and one bronze in the 16 events, including an upset gold in the 400-meter medley relay. Pam Minthorn, 18, of Gaithersburg, Md., who swims for Curl-Burke Swim Club, won the 200-meter freestyle in 2:02.32, the 100-meter butterfly in 1:01.5, and the 200-meter butterfly in 2:13.18. Summer Sanders, 16, of Roseville, who swims for the California Capital Aquatics, won both individual medleys. . . . Don Gambril has been named coach of the men’s team and Dick Shoulberg has been named coach of the women’s team for the Pan Pacific Games, the Alamo Cup and the World Cup meet to be held in Australia in January.