Razor Sharp, When Wet : Swimmers Find Bald Bodies Bring Better Times, Broken Records

His classmates held him down, produced a shiny razor and shaved Steve Baxter’s legs. Hunks of skin were caught in the blade, and the nicks and cuts unleashed a steady stream of blood.

Now, Baxter coaches swimmers who hold shaving parties.

It is a strange ritual, peculiar--but also essential--to swimming.

For six-month periods, female swimmers refrain from shaving their legs.

Then, when they do shave, they are joined by male counterparts who not only shave their legs, but arms, chests, backs and, in extreme cases, heads.

Swimmers discard hair in preparation for major competition, including the national championships, which began Monday in Austin, Tex. The hair, which has been a drag during training, is gone, leaving by a smooth, sensitized layer of skin.

Shaving, in conjunction with tapering--a rest period during which training time and yardage are dramatically reduced--improves a swimmer’s time by as much as 1 1/2 seconds in a 100-meter race.

“It’s a mysterious, nebulous thing,” USC Coach Mark Schubert said. “Although it has a physical effect, it has a huge psychological effect.”

No one knew that better than Barry Townsend, an especially hirsute swimmer in his days at UCLA. Townsend customarily locked himself in a closet after he shaved. Then he hyperventilated, burst out of the closet screaming, got on the blocks in a frenzied state and swam like a demon.

“He just did it with his mind,” said Baxter, a 1975 UCLA All-American.

Martin Zubero, the world record-holder in the 200-meter backstroke and Barcelona Olympics gold medalist, relishes the freshly shaved feeling.

“You’ve been so broken down,” he said. “And you rest and you shave, and you get a tingling sensation, especially after you cut yourself.”

The submersion of nerve endings sensitized by shaving apparently results in a natural high.

“You ask any swimmer, and they know the feeling,” Zubero said.

“It’s electrifying,” Baxter said. “Your whole body jolts. You jump in and it is like, wham! You feel completely different than you have in six months, and you seem to glide forever underwater.”

Distance freestyler Alexis Larsen of CLASS Aquatics in Calabasas calls it a slimy feeling.

“The water goes fluuuush by you,” she said. “It’s so nice to have all that hair off, especially under the sheets in the hotel room.”

With a taper and shave, Zubero improves by 3-4 seconds in the 200 backstroke.

“I’ll be jumping off the walls,” he said of his taper and shave for the coming European Championships. “When you cut down to one workout and sleep in in the morning, you have so much energy. And when you get off the weights, you are more flexible and mobile in the water.”

The first shave for men is often a painful process, however.

For women, fashion is different. While their friends show off smooth legs, they go to school with hairy legs.

Olympic gold medalist Nicole Haislett wears shorts year-round on campus at the University of Florida, but she is not uncomfortable with her hairy legs because her friends understand why she cannot shave.

“Some people rag on you,” she said. “But it is all in fun. You see the sorority girls, and you get some strange looks.”

Fortunately, socks and sandals are back in.

Four-time national champion Kristine Quance of Northridge is a rarity among top-ranked American women swimmers--she shaves her legs all the time.

“I never even knew that other coaches won’t let their swimmers shave,” Quance said. “Some of them are kicked off the team if they are caught shaving.”

Quance has allowed her leg hair to grow only once, before the 1992 U.S. Olympic trials.

“For four months it was really gross,” she said. “I have blonde hair and it didn’t come in blonde. I had to bleach it for the prom.”

In September, Quance will be a freshman at USC, where Schubert encourages his female swimmers to refrain from shaving.

“I can’t imagine not shaving,” said Quance, who will discuss the issue with Schubert.

At UCLA, Coach Cyndi Gallagher does not make it an issue, and many of her swimmers are clean-shaven.

Larsen wears pants during the fall and winter so that her peers don’t see her hairy legs.

“People at school wouldn’t understand,” said Larsen, a Harvard-Westlake High junior. “They probably would think it’s gross.”

Grotesque is the word former USC Coach Peter Daland uses to describe shaved heads.

“The only Trojan who ever shaved his head told me that God told him to,” Daland said.

In the 1991 NCAA meet, Trojan swimmers were the only finalists in the 50 and 100 freestyles without shaved heads. That probably will continue because Schubert is not a proponent of head shaving, although he shaved his every year for the Ohio state high school meet.

At most Southeastern Conference schools it is de rigueur, particularly at Tennessee.

“They got behind it,” Baxter said. “It is automatic. You shave your head, you go fast. You don’t, you go slow.”

Baxter also believes the hairless look has an effect on the opposition.

“You look meaner and more intimidating when you shave your head,” he said.

That was not the case, though, in 1972, when German Werner Lampe became one of the first Olympic swimmers to shave his head. Lampe was viewed as a freak when he won the bronze medal in the 200-meter freestyle.

Adding to the spectacle, he wore a wig on the victory stand.

“Everybody was howling,” UCLA men’s Coach Ron Ballatore said. “It was pretty funny.”

No one laughed at American Nelson Diebel when he upset the fastest 100-meter breaststroke field ever assembled and won an Olympic gold medal last summer in Barcelona.

“He could have won with hair,” CLASS Aquatics Coach Bud McAllister said.

But, as even Daland acknowledges, Diebel didn’t think he could win with hair.

“And that’s what counts,” Daland said.

McAllister respects head shavers for their sacrifice, but he believes their look is too extreme when swimming caps minimize drag almost as effectively.

When McAllister was in junior college at Grand Rapids, Mich., one of his teammates was not allowed to pick up his exam because the professor did not believe that the bearded, long-haired man pictured on the I.D. card was the same clean-shaven, bald man standing in front of him.

Because of his thick glasses, Zubero was nicknamed Gandhi after he shaved his head as a Florida high school sophomore.

Distracted by the sensation, he did not swim well and he refuses to shave his head again.

Jeff Rouse, the 100-meter backstroke world record holder, also draws the line at the hairline.

“It’s faster than a cap,” he said. “I just don’t want to go two months looking like a G.I. For those guys who do it, it is a huge psychological advantage, and maybe they do it because, if they did it once and they swam well, it becomes superstitious.”

*

The Australians revolutionized swimming in 1956 at the Olympic Games in Melbourne when they arrived on the blocks without hair. Their intention was to reduce friction. What they didn’t count on was the psychological boost.

Their dominance lent credence to what some considered a fad.

“It was intimidating,” said Murray Rose, Australian Olympic gold medalist and former USC star. “It always is when another team tries something.”

When Rose and Jon Henricks arrived at USC as freshmen in 1957, they introduced the practice.

Daland believes they were the first male swimmers to shave in California and possibly the only swimmers shaving in the United States at the time. By 1960, most U.S. swimmers shaved for the Olympics, and during the next season many college teams followed suit, including Southern Illinois, where Ballatore was a junior.

“It was pretty weird the first time,” he said. “I butchered myself pretty good, but it felt good when I hit the water.”