Olympic Trials

LONG BEACH, Calif. - With swirling breezes blowing off Long Beach Harbor, the open-air pool was supposed to be choppy and slow. With another five events in front of him, Michael Phelps surely would conserve energy on opening night of the U.S. Olympic trials for swim ming. No chance. Phelps began the meat of the Olympic year the way he ended 2003's championship season, with a world record. He had an empty tank when he capped last year by lowering his own standard in the 200-meter individual medley.

ATLANTA -- Going into the final of the men's 400-meter hurdles last night at Olympic Stadium, Torrance Zellner said he wasn't thinking about what happened to him four years ago at the last U.S. Olympic trials in New Orleans. The false start he thought he had committed but wasn't called. The disappointing, sixth-place finish.Instead, the former Woodlawn High star was thinking about getting back here next month for the 1996 Olympics."To get this close, I really want to make it," Zellner said yesterday afternoon, relaxing in his hotel room.

BARCELONA, Spain -- PattiSue Plumer is tough. So tough she runs in sunglasses. At night.She nudges runners in the pack, and sometimes she just runs them over. She criticizes American men for not accepting successful female athletes. She made the 1988 Olympic team despite having run only two competitive races that year. Then she collapsed right after her Olympic trials run.She's a 5-foot-4, 107-pound whirlwind, with long brown hair, hazel eyes and a Magic Johnson smile.And one mean attitude.

The No. 1-ranked U.S. Soling team of Kevin Mahaney, Doug Kern and Jim Brady of Annapolis, got back into heavy pre-Olympic campaigning with the Miami Olympic Classes Regatta.The event, which took place Jan. 30 through Feb. 2, out of the U.S. Sailing Center in Miami, Fla.,drew 529 competitors in 326 boats and 10 classes from 22 nations. With the Summer Olympics in Barcelona now only a few months away, competition was fierce.Over the past few years, the Miami OCR has developed into one of the premier sailing events in the world.

MINNEAPOLIS -- The victories are nice, Anita Nall was saying, but that is not what she cherishes most about swimming.Nall, 15, a sophomore at Towson High School, is ranked No. 1 in the world in the women's 200-meter breaststroke and is the American record-holder in the event.She has won gold medals in several big meets, including last night in the U.S. Open at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center. Nall won her specialty in a time of 2 minutes, 31.48 seconds."Everyone likes to win, and I'm happy about what I did tonight," said the North Baltimore Aquatic Club swimmer.

BOSTON -- Jair Lynch was in trouble yesterday at the FleetCenter. Not only did the 24-year-old gymnast fall from the high bar to land face-first on the mat, he got up and did it again. Penalized a half-point for each splat -- he received an 8.1 for the routine -- Lynch fell from fourth to seventh in the overall standings after two rotations of the men's optionals.It looked as if Wily E. Coyote had come to the 1996 U.S. Olympic Trials.A 1992 Olympian who nearly won a medal on the parallel bars in Barcelona, Lynch was suddenly in danger of not making this year's team.

BOSTON - When the U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials open tonight at the FleetCenter, the goal will be the same for the men's and women's teams, but the selection criteria will not. Everybody wants to put together the best possible team with the best possible chance to go for the gold at the Olympic Games next month in Sydney, Australia, but the men's and women's sports exist in two different worlds and play by two different sets of rules. The top four men in the all-around competition - based on combined performance in both the U.S. gymnastics championships and the four-day Olympic trials - are guaranteed a place on the U.S. team.

BOSTON - It has been little more than two weeks since Columbia gymnast Elise Ray vaulted to the U.S. national all-around championship, hardly enough time to savor her greatest athletic achievement ... and less than half the battle anyway. Ray carries the top score into the women's preliminaries of the U.S. Olympic gymnastic trials tonight at Boston's FleetCenter, but the nationals counted for only 40 percent of the two-competition Olympic rankings and new selection rules provide no guarantee that the top six women after Sunday's final will earn the six slots on the U.S. team.

Swimming has taken Michelle Griglione all over the world, has provided her a college education and, for the past 12 years, has been the vehicle on which she has ridden a wild roller coaster of competitive emotions.Griglione, 26, has eight medals from world-class events and an attic full of other mementos from a career that began at the Y in Alexandria, Va., when she was 6."She finished sixth and got a pink ribbon, but she loved it because pink was her favorite color," Carolyn Griglione said of her only child's first race.

PASADENA, Calif. -- It was another slow day at the Phillips 66 National Swimming Championships. Times have not been impressive through the first four days of competition at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center, and there are some who wonder what that says about the prospects for the American team at the '96 Olympics.The nationals serve as a qualifying meet for the Pan Pacific Championships in the Olympic pool at Atlanta next week, so there should be plenty of motivation to swim fast, but the first 24 events produced just one American record -- the mark of 1 minute, 58.33 seconds swam by Florida's Tripp Schwenk in the 200-meter backstroke.