Getting Ready

The demands are never ending, the sacrifices outrageous. Relentless workouts, a life lived in sweat. For what? A Greek traveler named Pausanias more than 1,800 years ago wrote of the "unique divinity" that cloaks the Olympics. The mystery may never be phrased better. The lure persists, transfixing competitors, enticing them to devote their lives to it. It leads women like Janet Evans to spend their youth in pools, logging the numbing laps, and men like Tim Daggett to suffer through injury after injury. All for a touch of that divinity.

Perhaps no trial is greater than the constant and solitary hardening of will. And few champions must strive for it in a solitude as perfect as Jackie Joyner-Kersee's. Four years ago, she narrowly lost the gold medal because a hamstring pull hobbled her in the 800-meter run. Now she has so greatly outdistanced the field in the heptathlon, that epic ordeal in seven acts, that the only rival in the corner of her eye is the memory of her last triumph. Since 1984 she has set the heptathlon world record and bettered it twice; she has shared the world record in the long jump. Regardless of the success and the mental and physical cost of its purchase, the work goes on. No number of records will substitute for an Olympic gold.

JANET EVANS, SWIMMING

She doesn't weigh much more than a long drink of water, but even that is something of a victory. "I'm 5 ft. 5 in., and 105 now. Yay!" laughs 16-year- old Freestyler Janet Evans. When she nearly made the 1986 World Championship team at 14, she stood a towering 4 ft. 10 in. and weighed about 80 lbs. soaking wet, which is most of the time. "Everyone knew me because of my size, but I just wanted to be recognized as a good swimmer." That recognition is piling up almost as fast as the 300 to 400 laps she does daily. Last year she became one of only a handful of swimmers to set three world records in a single year, in the 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle events. At Seoul she will compete in the 400 and 800 freestyle and the 400 individual medley. "A lot of people say, 'Look, you're the American hope,' or whatever, but I don't look at it that way," says Evans. "I'm swimming mostly for myself, and if I concentrate on what I have to do, then doing well for America will come as a by-product."

TERRY SCHROEDER, WATER POLO

Kicking, scratching and dunking are part of the daily ordeal of water-polo players. At age 29, with a wife and a career to attend to, Terry Schroeder might have done without the punishment. But Schroeder, captain of the U.S. team for the second consecutive Olympics, is haunted by the silver medal he and the squad won in Los Angeles four years ago. Haunted by silver? Leading the top-ranked Yugoslavs by a score of 5-2 in the final game and needing an outright win, the U.S. team got caught in a riptide. The Americans gave up three goals in the last ten minutes and had to settle for a tie and second place. "We were so close in '84, and at this point, we don't want to leave any stone unturned," says Schroeder. The memory "keeps coming back," which explains why he is preparing to do the same.

JOE FARGIS, EQUESTRIAN

Listen to Joe Fargis long enough, and it is easy to forget he will even be at the Olympics. It is not just that the rider who jumped to two gold medals in Los Angeles is self-effacing; he also gives the lion's share of the credit to his partner. "With horses, they are the athletes. You're hoping you've trained the horses to the best of your ability, so that on the day of the event you can call on them and they're going to do exactly what you want -- but that doesn't always happen." Because so much rides on the horse, as it were, Fargis claims the odds are against another gold. After all, he says, "you're dealing with a living, breathing creature, which has a mind of its own." In 1984 his mount was Touch of Class, and the 15-year-old former racehorse may appear in the show-ring in Seoul too, although Fargis' two faultless rounds at the Olympic trials in Bridgehampton, N.Y., were aboard Mill Pearl (pictured), a nine-year-old Irish-bred mare. "I'm quite lucky -- quite lucky -- to have two such horses, two great horses, at the same time," says Fargis. "It doesn't happen often."

EDWIN MOSES, TRACK AND FIELD

He doth bestride the hurdles like a colossus. Edwin Moses, world-record holder in the 400-meter hurdles, gold medalist of the 1976 and 1984 Olympics, owner of a historic string of 122 straight race victories spanning the years from 1977 to 1987; Moses the grand old man of the track has dominated his event more ruthlessly than any other Olympic athlete of the day. His winning streak was broken last year by fellow American Danny Harris in Madrid, and Moses lost one other race shortly thereafter because of a rare fall. But since then he has reasserted his authority, winning every race he has run, including the World Championships in Rome and the Olympic trials. To keep his edge, the 32- year-old athlete monitors his training with a personal computer that charts his interval times and heart rates. Says he: "My background is in science -- physics and engineering. And I read a lot about biomechanics and kinesiology." Just how brilliant a student Moses is may soon be clear: no man has ever won the same Olympic hurdle event three times.

GREG LOUGANIS, DIVING

He never seems more at home than in midair. The gold medals Greg Louganis won in Los Angeles in the 10-meter platform and springboard events were the pinnacle of his years in the sport. Now 28, he is spreading his wings more. He has begun acting in movies, and last October he brought his preternatural poise to the stage, making his professional dance debut at the Indiana Repertory Theater. Still, he puts in two diving sessions a day. The dancing, he says, helps too: "Diving is a very anaerobic sport, and someone might question the validity of aerobic training for an anaerobic sport, but it's good for divers to be well-rounded athletes." Especially with a flock of talented young Chinese divers now setting their sights on the sport's soaring eagle.

TIM DAGGETT, GYMNASTICS

The purity of an athlete's commitment does not guarantee success. For two years Tim Daggett, whose perfect 10 clinched the U.S. team's gold in Los Angeles, has bulled his way through the agony of injury. He has faced ankle surgery, a ruptured disk and nerve problems in his left arm. The worst came ten months ago after a vault at the World Championships in Rotterdam. When he landed disproportionately on his left leg, two bones simply snapped, severing an artery. His leg saved by an emergency operation, Daggett refused to stop: "I don't want to look back at any time for any reason and say, 'What if?' " Last week at the U.S. trials he had just scored a 9.9 on the pommel horse, then reinjured his leg dismounting from the rings. He will not compete in Seoul.

CARL LEWIS, TRACK AND FIELD

There is no shortage of things for Carl Lewis to think about. The sprinter and long jumper who racked up four golds in Los Angeles will certainly compete again in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter, the long jump and the 4 X 100- meter relay. Then there is the competition: Ben Johnson, the Jamaican turned ) Canadian speedster, has taken a little wind out of Lewis' sleek sails, winning their last five matchups in the 100, including a historic race in Rome in which he set the current world record of 9.83 sec. And finally, there is the old problem, the image problem. Lewis could wind up with a hoard of gold, but he would like to be recalled with something other than indifference. So he hopes to erase the Los Angeles memory of the jumper who, his gold assured, passed on his last four jumps instead of taking a crack at Bob Beamon's coveted world record of 29 ft. 2 1/2 in. He also wants to dispel the image of the 1984 prima donna who sat by while his manager boasted that "we think Carl will be bigger than Michael Jackson." History plus Ben Johnson: a lot to concentrate the mind.