Evans Enjoying Her Last Lap Of Career

Janet Evans was eating lunch alone at the Olympic Village the other day. This happens when you get to be a senior citizen of 24 and realize it’s all right to sit in a corner by yourself once in a while.

She heard athletes at nearby tables chattering in languages she did not even recognize, the delightful Tower of Babel of every Summer Games, and she said to herself, “This is really cool. I’ll never do this again.”

She sees her Olympic life passing before her eyes. Everything she does, she does for the last time. She is the only American woman swimmer to win four gold medals at the Summer Games, but now it’s nearly over.

Janet Evans does not even contemplate swimming for pleasure, not after “10 years in cold water, looking at a black line.”

Why else would the grand old lady of American swimming stay out of the pool?

“So I can get into a sundress,” Evans said, adding that her shoulders and upper arms are so thick and powerful from a lifetime of swimming that it would take a year before she could fit into regular sizes.

Any other reasons for wanting to stop swimming? “Sleeping in,” Evans said. “And not smelling of chlorine.”

But wouldn’t she be tempted to plop into a pool and swim a few laps? “Oh, maybe in 10 years,” she amended.

She did hedge her bets, however. She just might go into the pool because she is booked to give “stroke instruction” at some swimming clinics.

How will Evans keep fit? “Running,” she said, saying she might even try a marathon in Los Angeles next March.

Evans was discussing life after swimming yesterday at a delightful news conference that demonstrated it is quite possible to be a wise old professional at the age of 24, with two Summer Games behind her.

Olympic swimming does not have quite the cachet in America that it did in simpler days, before there were Dream Teams and Grand Slam tennis players and superstar gymnasts. Also, other countries have caught up with the United States in swimming.

But Janet Evans is a throwback to the great American swimming champions, partly because of her radiant smile and quickness with words, partly because of the three golds at the 1988 Summer Games and the gold and silver at the 1992 Summer Games.

She won her medals even while other nations were catching up to the United States. In 1988, she said, the East German women were so strong, with rumors of pharmacological assistance, that some of Evans’ teammates were in awe of them.

“But I was too young and I said, ‘Hey, I can beat them,”’ she said. “Then the wall fell, and I said there would not be any organized drug use, but now you still have allegations about other countries.”

Evans said she was in favor of proposals that any nation with four positive tests in swimming in one Games be banned from the next Games: “I think drastic measures have to be taken.”

She is captain of the women swimmers and was nominated by her sport to carry the American flag in the opening ceremony Friday night. Swimmers generally do not participate in the ceremony, but Evans said she would be proud to carry the flag. However, wrestler Bruce Baumgartner was given the honor.

If Evans were to win the 400- and 800-meter freestyles, she would surpass the American record for gold medals, set by Bonnie Blair, the speedskater. But Evans does not promise gold anymore. That was part of the problem in Barcelona, she said: “I thought too much. I lost the joy. It was something I had to do. It was a task.”

She felt the pressure kept her from winning the second gold medal in 1992: “You think, ‘If I blow this race, it will be four years.’ It’s the Olympics. It’s not like a Super Bowl. You can’t say, ‘Wait till next year.”’

Knowing that she will never swim competitively again, she has felt comfortable counting down every single act in her Olympic year. She felt a twinge of melancholy when she took her last workout in her home pool in California, a sadness when she cleaned out her locker, and now she mentally marks off every workout - “eight, seven, six…”

The younger swimmers come around and ask her how things work at the Games - “Where do I put my bags? Do I need my credentials?” And Evans takes her inspiration from Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee: “If the 30-somethings can do it, so can I,” said the aged swimmer star, all of 24.