From Stillness Comes Swiftness

Would more competition mean an even swifter Salnikov? Probably, but his furnace seems inner-stoked, less dependent than others on the billows of an opponent's breath.

"During races," says Salnikov, who speaks English well enough to translate the dialogue in American movies for teammates, "I would like more competition. But not on the last lap."

His Spartakiade race over, Salnikov backstrokes to mid-pool and waves once more to Marina as cameras snap. He climbs from the water, and the barracuda in him—the American in him, if you believe U.S. swim coaches—vanishes. "Molodets!" shout his Leningrad teammates in unison. Translation: "Good boy!"

He goes to a side room to give a blood sample and finds Marina already there, pricking other swimmers' fingers with a pin and sucking a few drops into a tube. A graduate of the Central Institute of Physical Culture in Moscow, she's keeping biochemical data on swimmers. Marina and Vladimir got married in September, 1982, discomforting Soviet swimming officials, who worried that Marina was too beautiful a distraction for any man on such an all-consuming hunt. "If you want me to continue swimming," Salnikov told his coach, "for me it is a better way to feel like a man, not a machine." In his first international meet after the wedding, Salnikov set two short-course world best records.

Vladimir and Marina exchange smiles and a few words, and he gives her a rose he has just been presented. Their secret is that she understands, having withstood some of the same regimen and pressure as a 16-year-old Soviet junior women's champion in the 100-meter dash. When her father worried that continuing to sprint 100 meters in 11.5 seconds might undermine her femininity, she considered his advice. Speed lost. Marina quit.

Suddenly, in the blood-testing room, Salnikov is surrounded by the uniformed children who assist on the pool deck, all clamoring for an autograph. Now a former Soviet cosmonaut pulls him aside to talk, and the press encircles them. Salnikov tells the press to wait because he must go collect his medal. A 72-year-old painter asks Salnikov to pose for a photograph so he can use it to paint Salnikov's portrait: "A little to the left, turn a little more to the left. Here, come out in the light more. No, no, tilt your chin this way a little more." Salnikov is actually adjusting his head this way and that as he stands in line for the march to the medal stand. Spillover media surround the dazed Marina and demand that she arrange interviews and photo sessions with her husband. A Japanese TV announcer asks Salnikov to go back in the water for an interview in which the Japanese will fall into the pool after posing his final question. Salnikov agrees to that, too. A Moscow reporter asks for a private interview Monday. "Call me Tuesday," says Salnikov.

Now he's being swept off to a press conference, where the Soviet media applauds him, then to a session with his masseuse. Five members of the press follow him, one a Tass journalist asking questions from a typed sheet of paper. Another reporter, an Oriental, asks, "What is your age? Your weight? Your pulse rate? When were you married?" Patiently, Salnikov answers.

"Can you turn over on your back?" says the national swim team masseuse, a jolly 50-year-old. "Or is that inconvenient for giving interviews?"

She finishes the rubdown and kisses him, then he goes back to find his wife. The stampede has passed and Marina sits alone, holding the rose, her eyes still shiny from tears. He shakes his head and hugs her. No, no, this isn't the kind of life they have planned at all.

"Man, you should see us in those sailboat races. I have no conscience! I go for broke! The wind will be blowing 20 knots at our back and I'll be putting up the spinnaker when the other boats wouldn't dream of it, and it's exit, stage left! It's good night, Gladys! Hey, that's George Gobel. Hey, George, how you doing? I met you doing Hollywood Squares."