Splashes Of Class And Acts of Heroism

By John Skow

He was 8 points ahead of Tan Liangde of China, which was about where you would expect Greg Louganis to be after eight dives in the springboard preliminaries. This is something like saying the sun was where you expected it to be at noon. Next up was a moderately difficult reverse somersault that he was accustomed to nailing for 8s and 9s, but this time it went wrong. He jumped almost straight up instead of up and out, spun too close to the board, cracked his head on the board's edge as he rotated backward, and wobbled raggedly into the water. It was the melodrama of the Seoul competition's opening week, and the message of this first act was "He's human after all." The second act, soon to come, seemed to prove what many had thought all along: "No, he's not."

There was plenty of drama in another tank a couple of subway stops away as swimming began to churn, but what we saw most vividly at first was not theater; it was a delightful geography lesson.

True, the powerful East German women's team won three of the first four golds and did not stop there. Cheeky, frail-looking Janet Evans of the U.S., a 17-year-old whose nonexistent muscle mass offers no visible means of propulsion, easily took the fourth gold in the 400-meter individual medley, as form said she would. She went on to shock East Germany's imposing Heike Friedrich, accelerating astonishingly in the last 50 meters of the 400 freestyle, to break her own world record by 1.6 sec. with a 4:03.85. But the first four women's silvers went to two Chinese, a Costa Rican and a Rumanian, while a French gamine named Catherine Plewinski was a tick away with a bronze in the 100 free. The once-every-four-years fan wonders, When did all these people learn to swim?

Among the men, Tamas Darnyi of Hungary broke his own world record in the 400 individual medley, with Dave Wharton of the U.S. a solid second. Britain's Adrian Moorhouse was favored to win the 100-meter breaststroke, and did. Big Matt Biondi finally won his first gold by anchoring the U.S. 4 X 200-meter freestyle relay team to a world-record win in the best race of the week, roaring up from behind to beat Steffen Zesner of East Germany with the fastest 200-meter leg ever swum, as teammates Troy Dalbey, Matt Cetlinski and Doug Gjertsen bayed to the rafters at poolside. But before that, he finished third . in the 200-meter freestyle, behind Australian Duncan Armstrong and Swede Anders Holmertz, and then was just touched out (and so thoroughly flummoxed that he was muttering shoulda-coulda three days later) in the 100-meter butterfly, 53.00 to 53.01, by a gent listed as "Anthony Nesty, SUR."

Shouts were heard: "What's SUR?" "Suriname," someone answered, "northeast South America." Nesty, who trains at the University of Florida, was the first citizen of this former Dutch colony to win an Olympic medal. Biondi, leading at 98 meters, was caught awkwardly between strokes and, a relative newcomer to the fly, tried to glide to the wall. "I was afraid if I took another stroke, what would touch first would be my nose," he explained gloomily. But Nesty, who won the same race in the Pan American Games last year, belonged on the Olympic victory stand, and so did a surprising number of athletes from countries whose representatives used to disappear in the prelims. What happened long ago in track was now evident in swimming: world beaters were bobbing up from all over the world.

Still, Louganis was the athlete who had people shaking their heads, days after he went down in flames. "I was pretty shaken," he said later. "I heard this big clank . . ." He climbed out of the pool under his own power, back erect and face composed. As they walked together offstage, his coach Ron O'Brien asked whether he felt solid enough to continue. He said he thought so but was uncertain about a concussion and possible loss of equilibrium. "The temptation," admits Louganis, 28, "was there to say, 'I will collect my things and go home now.' " O'Brien sensed doubt and told the prodigy, who won a 1976 silver in platform and both diving golds in 1984, that he had worked too hard to let the Seoul championship slip away, that hockey players regularly got 50 stitches and skated the same night. Greg agreed, and a medic put four temporary stitches in his noggin.

On the three-meter board some 40 minutes later, there was a moment before his tenth of eleven dives that was pure Louganis. He is an actor who says, "The stage is my base." In a restrained, impeccably controlled way, he is the most theatrical of athletes. His carved, deep-chested body is elegant and three or four pounds heavier through the shoulders than when he competed in Los Angeles. The additional muscle, built in the weight room to withstand the battering, three-story falls of platform diving, helps establish the mood of power and confidence he projects in the stillness before he springs. This stage presence is what competitors who simply climb the ladder and dive must contend with. But now Louganis opened his face in an amused, impish grin. Each of those who were there or who saw the replays that ran endlessly all week received a personal Lougano-gram: "I'm laughing at myself for my stupidity, but I don't want you to worry. Everything will be all right."

And then he cracked off his best dive of the day. The public saw the heroics but not the wound to Greg's confidence. He refused to watch a videotape of his accident, not wanting to have the flawed dive stored visually in his memory. Next day, a few hours before the finals, he told O'Brien that he was scared. In practice he overcompensated to such a degree that "I was out in the middle of the pool." So much for practice, so much for fears. When the finals began -- had anyone doubted this? -- it was just another day in Valhalla for the best diver the sport has ever seen. Well ahead of China's Tan Liangde (silver) and Li Deliang (bronze), who were merely excellent, and with the platform diving still to come, he won a third Olympic gold to go with his two from Los Angeles.

Among the women, there are fine divers, but there has never been a Louganis to set standards and define the sport's next levels. There is simply the traditional power, the U.S., trying to hang on, and the irrepressible new force, China, surging ahead. Success in any given meet is a matter of habitual caution matched against finely calculated boldness. The U.S. women are trained to do moderately difficult dives, 2s to 3s, with consistent superiority. "We have held back on the harder dives to keep our program consistent, which is the top priority," said U.S. assistant coach Scott Reich. "As long as you don't do anything horrible, you are always in the ball game." The wave of very young Chinese girls -- whose faces and names seem to change with each international meet but whose precision and fearless aggressiveness do not -- try very hard dives of 3 to 3.5. Often they have learned them from videotapes of Louganis. The Americans wait for them to fluff a dive. Sometimes they do. In the women's platform at Seoul, Chen Xiaodan, 14, a solid third, blew sky-high on her last dive, a wrenching back 3 1/2-somersault pike. Wendy Williams of the U.S. slipped through to take the bronze. (The flamboyant Chen was an eight-year-old gymnast when a diving coach asked if she could dive off a platform. She did, neglecting to mention that she could not swim, and immediately sank to the bottom of the pool.)

China's Xu Yanmei, a 17-year-old who won the World Cup diving championship last year in the Netherlands, chose a slightly more conservative routine and easily won the gold by meeting her own goal. Scrappy Michele Mitchell, 26, the top U.S. platform diver, performed equally well, but her dives were only about seven-tenths as difficult as Xu's. She earned another silver to go with the one she captured at the Los Angeles Olympics, where China's Zhou Jihong, no longer an Olympian, won the gold.

No lectures on courage are required by Mitchell, who has dislocated both shoulders in bad landings (Louganis has dislocated one shoulder, and wears a wrist brace because of a bone chip). She was grumbling even before the meet about "couch potatoes" in the U.S. who think a silver medal is a failure. But O'Brien knows what he is talking about, and he says flatly, "We are going to have to move up to a higher level of dives." In women's springboard competition, to confuse this issue, Gao Min of China won with a conservative dive list. Her teammate Li Qing and veteran Kelly McCormick of the U.S. tried bolder dives but finished a distant second and third.

At the swim gym, this time in the women's sprint events, the difficulty level consisted of one woman's performance. If you wanted to win, you had to beat her (or in the breaststroke her teammate Silke Hoerner, who went on to set a world record in her 200-meter event). In race after race, no one did. East Germany's 6-ft. 1-in. Kristin Otto with no apparent difficulty cruised home first in the 100 free, the 100 back, the 4 X 100 free relay and the 100 fly. Four golds; then one more as she led the East German team to victory in the 4 X 100 medley relay.

The two wildest races of the week were the women's 400 free and the men's 4 X 200 freestyle relay. The first belonged to Janet Evans, teasingly called "Princess" by the swim-team staff because of her occasionally imperious ways. She developed a crick in her neck at training camp in Hawaii, doubtless, it was said, because of a pea under her mattress. In Seoul, she complained, the team had to walk (she pronounced the unfamiliar word with distaste) to practice. Biondi said, trying to sound as if he believed it, that Evans owes her success to her "little skinny muscles," which are too small, he was sure, to store painful quantities of fatigue-producing lactic acid. "Look at this," said the 6-ft. 7-in. Biondi, sticking one huge arm under a reporter's nose. "I get all filled up with the stuff, and it hurts."

"I hurt," said Evans, as a masseur worked over her after her 400-medley victory. "The day after a race, I hurt all over." But in her 400 free rouser it was the trailing East German powerhouses, Heike Friedrich and Anke Moehring, who hurt first. Biondi's coach Nort Thornton offered a clue: "You think Janet doesn't have the body? She's a heart and lung pump, an incredible aerobic machine. Her chest expansion is six inches, and that's two or three inches more than any other woman on the team." Against Friedrich and Moehring, Evans' rare aerobic gifts showed, and so did her courage. By 300 meters, Heike had narrowed the lead to 16 one-hundredths, a gap she could close in the time it takes to say "16 one-hundredths." But Evans accelerated, swimming all by herself at the end, and finished with a stunning 4:03.85. Frank Keefe, the U.S. swim team's manager, said, "That's not a world record, it's a universe record." Friedrich shook her head, admitting the awkward truth: "I can't swim a 4:03 at this time."

As Evans talked wistfully of home (she will be a senior at El Dorado High School in Placentia, Calif.), Biondi flogged himself for mishandling the finish of the 100 fly and letting Nesty steal the gold. His scorched pride drove him through his winning anchor leg of the 4 X 200-meter relay. He speculated wryly that the loss might even give him the motivation to make the national water-polo team (he was a four-time All-American at Berkeley), stay with it and compete at Barcelona in 1992. In any case, the racing career of this big, likable man was blazing to a close. He is a social fellow in a loner's sport, and the relays have given him the comradeship he needs. As swimming wound down, he anchored the U.S. 4 X 100 free relay team (Chris Jacobs, Troy Dalbey and Tom Jager were the other members) in an event the U.S. has not lost in modern times. That kind of dominance can't last, but it did not end in Seoul; solid splits by the first three swimmers and another spectacular anchor leg by Biondi gave the U.S. its second relay world record. The next night he lined up for the 50-meter free. Earlier he had broken an Olympic record in the 100 free; now he beat teammate Jager for a world mark in the 50. With the 4 X 100 medley relay, which was to be the last race of his career, still to come, he had a bronze, a silver and four golds. When he returns to California, he wants to build a camper on a used pickup truck he owns and travel around the U.S. "I've seen pools all over the world," he said, "but not much else."

Submariner David Berkoff, the U.S. backstroker who swims the first third of his 100-meter races underwater, broke his own record in the prelims and predicted with no excessive bashfulness that it would take another world record for him to win a gold. But he got a bad start that evening in the final, faded, and in a startling upset was beaten in slow time by another submariner, Japan's Daichi Suzuki.

No one touched Janet Evans. She went out fast in her last race, the 800- meter free, and hung on for a new Olympic record, finishing the meet with three golds in three tries. That accomplished, she planned a shop-till-you- drop expedition in Seoul's Itaewon market district. One old hero, the great Michael Gross of West Germany, seemed to have come to earth. Until the meet's last days, the lanky "Albatross," who dominated the '84 games, had managed only a bronze in the 4 X 200 relay. Now, one more time, he set out to dominate the field in his specialty, the 200-meter butterfly. As always, he led easily for the first 150 meters. He faded in the last 50 -- this was new -- but he managed to scratch out a win.

That was almost the last splash for swimming; on to track. On to Barcelona. Let's see, is what's her name, the little U.S. distance champion, still swimming? And who was that big American guy who won all the medals back in '88?

With reporting by Sandra Burton/Seoul