Return of the Water Sprites

It had become as regular as the clockwork of Olympic swimming judges. Every four years, a collection of adolescent American girls put aside their good-luck Teddy bears, jumped into the water and swam away with a gaggle of gold medals. No sooner had 500 journalists written stories beginning "Thank heaven for little girls . . ." than the entire U.S. women's swimming team retired to study for their driver's licenses. But in short order, pools were filled with a new generation of water sprites, and America's junior high school swimming juggernaut splashed relentlessly on: five of seven gold medals in the Rome Games of 1960; six of eight at Tokyo in 1964; eleven of 14 in the 1968 Mexico City Olympiad; eight of 14 at Munich in 1972.

Then came Montreal. A powerful East German team--older, bigger, stronger, better trained--swamped all comers, winning eleven of 13 events. U.S. swimmers managed to take only a single gold medal, the 400-meter freestyle relay. The defeat was so total, the humiliation so painful, that coaches hinted darkly of the victors' using illegal drugs during training, and some swimmers made unsportsmanlike cracks about the heavily muscled East German women.

After the disaster in Montreal, U.S. coaches revised their training techniques, incorporating East German innovations like relying primarily on endurance training and weight lifting.

Records started to fall, but the big question remained: Were the new American women tough enough to take on the East Germans head-to-head in an actual meet? Last week the young Americans were put to the test in a distant and Olympic-like setting: the World Swimming Championships held in West Berlin.

The leading swimmer of the Americans with the most to win--or lose--was Tracy Caulkins, a gangling 15-year-old from Nashville who still has heavy braces on her teeth. In the past four months she had set 14 U.S. records and one world record in butterfly, breaststroke and medley events, and her potential was enormous.

At 5 ft. 8 in., 110 lbs., Tracy was an almost perfect swimming machine, slim, long-armed and, after years of rigorous training, powerful. She learned to swim at four and, with the prodding of an older brother and sister (Amy, 17, played on the U.S. women's water polo team that gave an exhibition in Berlin), she began to swim seriously as an eight-year-old. At twelve she started weight training, and shortly thereafter settled into a grueling six-day-a-week regimen.

She rose at 5 a.m. in order to squeeze in five hours--eight to ten miles--in the water each day, supplemented by thrice-weekly workouts in the weight room. She even turned a bad break into a boon. Last fall she fractured her right leg playing on a swing. Outfitted with a fiber-glass cast, she went back into the water. Unable to use her legs, she swam for six weeks using just her arms and shoulders; the strength gained from hauling a useless leg through lap after lap resulted in dramatically faster times in the butterfly and breast stroke.

In Berlin, Caulkins was surprisingly confident and cool for a young girl who felt she had a responsibility to the American team to do well. The pressure, she said, "doesn't really bother me."

Obviously not. Churning through the pool built by Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Olympics, Caulkins won five gold medals and broke four world records in the process. Her most dramatic victory came in the 400-meter medley over former Record Holder Ulrike Tauber, 20, who won the gold medal in Montreal. The medley is the most technically demanding event in swimming, requiring mastery of four separate strokes and three different types of turns--the test of the compleat swimmer. Caulkins beat Tauber by an astonishing seven seconds, finishing nearly half a pool length in the lead. In the 200-meter medley, Caulkins smoothly shaved 1.02 seconds off her own world mark. Too nearsighted to see the Scoreboard, she had to get a teammate to explain the reason for the crowd's roar.

The American fans had a lot more to cheer about. As usual, the U.S. men's team won handily, with Soviet and East German swimmers trailing badly. Meanwhile, as the competition entered its final weekend, the American women had won 19 gold medals while the East Germans had not won a single final. California's Cynthia Woodhead won three golds, as did fellow Californian Linda Jezek, who swam off with a world record in the 200-meter backstroke. She finished in 2:11.93, more than two seconds ahead of East Germany's Birgit Treiber, the former record holder and the winner of a gold medal in Montreal.

Summing up the meet, Andrea Pollack, East Germany's former world record holder in the butterfly, said: "They trained hard. We trained hard. But they were just better." Indeed, Pollack herself was beaten by another Nashville phenom, 18-year-old Joan Pennington. Next big test: the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, where the outcome may be far different from what it was in Montreal. The American water sprites have come back.

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