|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Flouting convention Teuscher takes unusual route back to Olympics
INDIANAPOLIS -- One night during her first semester at Columbia University in 1996, Cristina Teuscher was learning survival skills on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She walked into one of three all-night vegetable markets on the same block and spotted a woman squeezing the melons. "Excuse me, how do you know if these are fresh?" Teuscher asked. After taking in a dissertation on the cantaloupe, Teuscher sprang for some chocolate chip cookies at one of two newsstands on an adjacent block, dodged a doddering, wobbly gentleman who had just come in from a brewery, and searched for a token. Hmm, bus or subway? This was not the life of a pampered college athlete who was already an Olympic gold medalist, and that's exactly why Teuscher, who grew up in the New York suburb of New Rochelle, chose it. "I love this place," Teuscher said then and now, having just made her second Olympic team as an Ivy League anomaly. She rejected scholarship offers from traditional powerhouses Stanford, USC and SMU, instead picking the academically demanding institution with the aging 25-yard pool at Broadway and 114th Street, half a mile south of Harlem and nine stops north of Times Square on the No. 1 subway line. Her family had to fork over the $25,000 a year in tuition since the Ivy League doesn't grant athletic scholarships. Why bother with NCAA competition when there was endorsement money to be made? And why bother with Ivy League competition when there was tuition money to be saved? "To be honest, I wanted to live a normal life that was fun and challenging and had more to it than just swimming," she said. Teuscher was already an established name in swimming. Two months after her high school graduation, she won a gold medal on the U.S. 4x200-meter freestyle relay team at the Atlanta Olympics. Before that she had won a silver medal at age 16 at the '94 Worlds in the 400-meter freestyle. She collected three golds at the '95 Pan-Am Games in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the birth country of her parents, Monica and Enrique. Her grandparents had gone from Germany to Argentina before World War II. Her parents came to the States 30 years later when political turmoil overran Argentina. This was the same Teuscher who before the '96 Olympic final in the 4x200 free relay led a cheer with teammates Trina Jackson, Sheila Taormina and Jenny Thompson. The chant "Big dog/Little dog/Woof, woof, woof" just about frightened the German team, in an adjacent lane, into submission. At the trials this week in Indianapolis, Teuscher scratched from the semis of the 200 free in order to concentrate on the 200 individual medley. She won the final Saturday in 2:13.36. Teuscher graduated from Columbia with a degree in psychology this spring. In June she became the first Ivy Leaguer and fourth swimmer ever honored as the nation's outstanding collegiate female athlete. She won NCAA titles in both the 400 free and 400 IM. At Columbia, she turned the Lions' record book into a Cristina Teuscher anthology, setting 10 marks without ever losing an individual race. Even Don Schollander, the Yalie who won four Olympic gold medals at the 1964 Tokyo Games, was beaten in college. Teuscher was named to the Academic All-Ivy League team twice, having maintained a 3.4 GPA. There is even talk that the school will build a new aquatic center, what with the new interest in swimming she has created on campus. When Teuscher's boyfriend, a Columbia soccer player, was in attendance at her meets, the school p.a. announcer would crack her up with this introduction: "In lane 4, majoring in men's soccer and minoring in psychology, Cristina Teuscher." Her coaches once waited until the bus ride to Brown University before asking if she would mind swimming in a 1,000-yard race instead of her usual 500-yard event. No problem, Teuscher said. It's the regular-girl air people like about Teuscher, who doesn't do interviews as much as conversations. She'll frequently jump in with a query of her own, as though she had just met some pals on the street. You wanna know anything about melons?
Precocious Phelps makes historyTwo months after his 15th birthday, Michael Phelps, a junior at Towson High School outside of Baltimore, became the youngest male swimmer in 68 years to make an Olympic team when he finished second in the 200 butterfly. Phelps was in fourth place with about 20 meters to go but used a final-50 split of 30.02 seconds to pull into second place in 1:57.48, 6/10ths behind race winner Tom Malchow. Ralph Flanagan was 13 when he swam at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Brian Cazeneuve is a Sports Illustrated writer-reporter who covers the Olympics and is a frequent contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send a question to his Sydney 2000 Mailbag.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
