|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Veterans Day Beard, Van Dyken highlight '96 returnees
INDIANAPOLIS -- Welcome back to the Olympic team, Amanda Beard. See you in Sydney, Amy Van Dyken. Didn't we just talk to you last week, Jenny Thompson, Dara Torres and Tom Dolan? Just as soon as U.S. swimming aficionados were ready to welcome the new generation, two more vets who were long in the tooth proved they were still fast in the water. Monday night, Beard and Van Dyken joined fellow 1996 gold medalists Brooke Bennett, Cristina Teuscher, Scott Tucker, Josh Davis and Gary Hall Jr. on the 2000 Olympic team. Thompson, Torres and Dolan, who had already made the team in other events, each qualified in encore showings. "Age is just a mind thing," said Dolan, who will turn 25 on Sept. 15, the date of the opening ceremonies. "Experience is all about knowing how to train and how to gut it out in those last 10 meters when the Olympics are on the line." Dolan won the 200-meter individual medley Monday night in 2:00.81, half a second ahead of Tom Wilkens. Last Thursday he finished first in the 400 IM, the event he won in Atlanta. Beard's finish was more surprising. Though hardly ready for pasture at age 18, Beard had been quiet since the '96 Games, when she won silver medals in the 100 and 200 breaststrokes and gold in the 4x100 medley relay. In Atlanta the shy 14-year-old was never without her stuffed teddy bear, and spoke barely more than the bear in interviews. Her parents turned down post-Olympic requests for her to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Oprah Winfrey Show so she could pursue a normal life. In the ensuing years Beard practically disappeared from the swimming radar screen. Her world rankings in the 100 and 200 breast were hardly fodder for a second wind -- 1997: 23rd, 26th; '98: 35th, 53rd; '99: 23rd, 25th. Age notwithstanding, she might as well have been a graybeard based on her swims. The teddy-bear girl has changed. In the last year, Beard moved from the family's house in Irvine, Calif., into an apartment with two roommates at the University of Arizona, where she will be a sophomore this fall. The girl who stood 5-2 and weighed 95 pounds in Atlanta is now 5-8, 130. The teddy bear is gone. Instead, she has two tattoos and a tongue stud. Her home houses four birds, two cats, two rabbits, a dog and not a hint of her Olympic glories. "I was just doing things most people do when they're 15, 16, 17," Beard said. "I was living my life; I wasn't going into hiding and I wasn't giving up on swimming." A second-place finish at the NCAA championships this year proved that. But it wasn't until the trials that Beard asked to be taken seriously. She posted her fastest time in the 200 breast since the Atlanta Games in prelims (2:29.62), improved to 2:28.59 in the semis and was seeded a strong third behind Kristy Kowal and Megan Quann in the final. When Quann tired over the last 100, Beard shot past her and touched the wall second in 2:26.79, behind only Kowal's American record 2:24.75. After the race not only Kowal but Quann and Staciana Stitts, the two swimmers who had qualified for the team in the 100 breast on Friday, swam into Beard's lane to congratulate her. "This wasn't like '96," Beard said. "If I hadn't made it, I knew life would still go on. I didn't have any expectations because of my past." That couldn't be said for the veterans who finished first through fourth in the women's 100-meter freestyle: Thompson, 27 (54.07 seconds), Torres, 33 (54.62), Ashley Tappin, 25 (55.28) and Van Dyken, 27 (55.30). The four, who will comprise the 4x100 free relay team in Sydney, have seven previous Olympic appearances among them, winning 15 medals, including 12 gold. Their average age is 28 years, four months. It took Van Dyken a good three minutes to get to a standing position after the race. She found a seat on the pool deck and had a masseur roll icepacks up and down both legs. In June '98 Van Dyken, the defending Olympic champ in the 100 butterfly, had the first of two surgeries on her right shoulder, which have caused her to give up the fly. "That race felt really good," Van Dyken was able to say in between grimaces. "Seven months ago my arm was in a sling and I was basically a shot in the dark."
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.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
