Good Show By Goodell

Smith is a muscular fellow with a tiny maple leaf tattooed on his rippling chest. "When I came to Berkeley the first time, my grandmother pleaded with me not to become Americanized," he explains. "I got myself tattooed in her honor, to symbolize that I'm proud to be Canadian." Smith is apparently an influential young man. Following his example, two other Canadians swimming for U.S. schools—Southern Cal's George Nagy and Florida's Bill Sawchuk—recently had maple-leaf tattoos applied to their bodies. One of Smith's teammates, American Jeff Freeman, has also gotten tattoo fever. "I wanted to show that I'm as crazy as Graham," he says, thereby explaining why he had the inscription USA SWIMMING tattooed on his shoulder.

Somehow a tattoo would seem all wrong on all-American boy Brian Goodell, the personification of discipline and hard work. A product of the powerful Mission Viejo Nadadores, Goodell progressed in the sport thanks in no small measure to grueling workouts he eagerly performed in what Coach Mark Schubert calls the "animal lane." So loath was Goodell to waste time in workouts that when some teammates began engaging in horseplay in Schubert's absence, he left the pool in disgust.

Goodell is still an ardent worker. "He has bad workouts just like anybody else," says Tony Bartle, a UCLA teammate who is also Goodell's fraternity brother in Sigma Alpha Epsilon. "But when he hits a good workout, he can wind up with some incredible times in practice." Bartle is also impressed by Goodell's powers of concentration. "Brian lives in the fraternity, and sometimes I don't know how he can do it and still swim," Bartle says. "I don't live in the house because I couldn't handle it. I'd fool around too much and be bothered by all the noise. But Brian is able to ignore a lot of things and study or go to bed when he should. He also budgets his time very well."

By Goodell's own reckoning, however, he suffered a lapse in self-discipline when he came to UCLA in the fall of 1977, a lapse that he feels contributed to his woes last summer. "I was living in the dormitory then and it was my first time away from home," he says. "I went kind of crazy from all the freedom. I ran around, got sick and missed a lot of time in the water. It caught up with me at the nationals. I don't think the strep throat would have bothered me so much except for the way I'd trained in the fall. I didn't have enough background."

Whatever the exact explanation for his failure to qualify for the world championships, Goodell says the experience taught him a lesson. "I now realize I should never take anything for granted. I'd been telling everybody I was going to Berlin. I wrote a friend in West Germany and told her that I'd be there. I made a fool of myself. When I didn't make the team, I had to write and tell her. It was awful."

In West Berlin the 400 and 1,500 were won by the Soviet Union's Vladimir Salnikov, who came perilously close to Goodell's world records. Today Goodell says, "I'm glad he didn't break my records. But I'm also glad that he came so close. I needed the challenge of having somebody I had to beat. In a way, it might have been good if he'd got my records."

Last December Salnikov and five other Soviet swimmers trained for two weeks at Mission Viejo, and Goodell, home for Christmas, worked out alongside his rival for several days. The Soviets and their Mission Viejo hosts also took part in a meet at UCLA, where Goodell beat Salnikov in the 1,650. It was Salnikov's first stab at the event, but Goodell says, "Anytime I can beat him I consider it to my advantage."

He obviously feels the same way about Bobby Hackett, who has lost many times to Goodell, the 1,500 at Montreal, in which Hackett settled for the silver medal, being the most notable example. Until now Hackett has tended to play rabbit while Goodell has swum at what coaches call a "negative-split" pace, meaning that he covered the second half of races faster than the first, overtaking Hackett at the end. In Cleveland, during a morning preliminary heat in the 500 freestyle, public-address announcer Guy Barnicoat, whose children are teammates of Goodell's at Mission Viejo during the summer, took note of this by referring to Goodell as "the greatest negative-split swimmer in the world."

That angered Harvard Coach Joe Bernal, who rushed up to Barnicoat and accused him of a pro-Goodell bias. "Why don't you just say he's going to win tonight?" Bernal asked sarcastically, referring to the evening final in which Goodell and Hackett were to meet.

"Because I don't know if he's going to," answered Barnicoat.