Ziegler's Winning Attitude Has Long Been on Display

By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2008

BEIJING -- To most of the world, Kate Ziegler's moment will last less than 12 minutes 30 seconds, roughly the combined time it will take her to swim the Olympic finals of the 400- and 800-meter freestyle races. She will dash into America's consciousness for that span, first Aug. 11 in the 400, then Aug. 16 in the 800. Should she win a medal -- particularly in the 800, in which she could contend for gold -- she might return from the Beijing Games something of a hero, a key part of a U.S. swimming team from which major accomplishments are expected.

During those times on national and international television, Ziegler's home town -- Great Falls -- likely will be acknowledged as well. That, it seems to those around her, is really what matters. She is 20, a world champion, a world record holder, a first-time Olympian. She might win gold. She might finish eighth. But in either of those results, she will have a group of people from Fairfax County who will beam with their approval.

"Kate is Kate," said Arthur Lopez, the coach and founder of Nadar Por Vida, a Fairfax County-based nonprofit organization that helps involve underprivileged, minority children in swimming. "What a wonderful, down-to-earth human being."

The focus of the swimming events at the Beijing Games, from an American perspective, will be very much about wins and losses, not to mention world records. Will Maryland's Michael Phelps match or surpass Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals? Will Katie Hoff, also from Maryland, announce herself as a female swimmer nearly Phelps's equal? Will 41-year-old Dara Torres overshadow them both by winning gold in her fifth Games?

Somewhere in the middle of all that will land stories like Ziegler's, a self-described "homebody" who, in the last four years, developed into one of the most capable distance swimmers in the world, perhaps America's best since Janet Evans in the late 1980s.

"I'm obviously excited," Ziegler said at last month's Olympic trials, before she departed for a training camp in California, then another in Singapore. "It's hard to even believe now that I'm in the Olympics. I think I just want to go there and do my best, swim my best times. If I do that, I think I'll be happy."

It is the way Ziegler and her supporters -- a group that starts with folks her parents call "Team Kate," from the doctor who helps her manage her asthma to her personal trainer to her physical therapist to the orthopedic surgeon who helped her overcome a pair of broken feet five years ago -- will approach Beijing. The performance here matters, of course, because it is one of the reasons she has swum countless kilometers this year, last year, going back to when she was a kid. But "Team Kate" and her other fans in Northern Virginia also believe the Olympics and whatever happens in them will be only part of Ziegler's legacy.

"We've always told her we hope she'll be a good swimmer for 10 years, then a good person for 70," said her father, Don, who will travel with his wife, Cathy, to Beijing later this week. "There's so much more to Kate than just being a swimmer. She has hopes and dreams. She has foibles. She's just as interested in doing her charity work. There's so much."

Her work with Nadar Por Vida -- Spanish for "swimming for life" -- is an example, but just one. After high school at Bishop O'Connell in Arlington, Ziegler decided against swimming in college in favor of turning pro, taking classes at nearby George Mason and remaining with her lifelong coach, Ray Benecki. When she signed a contract with swimsuit manufacturer Speedo, a stipulation in the deal provided equipment to Lopez's group. She gives time each year to speak to Lopez's students, many of whom would be racing in baggy shorts if she hadn't provided proper swimsuits.

"Kate is very shy," Lopez said. "She doesn't like to talk about herself. But when she's here, when she volunteers her time, she shakes e verybody's hand. She talks to every kid.

"I had her get in the water and show us strokes. When she was done, she said: 'Is that all? Do you want me to do more?' She just has opened doors we could never have opened without her."

At the Olympic trials, as a means of thanks, Lopez had T-shirts made in support of Ziegler -- gray with red letters, barking "Adelante Kate" -- and the group stood out in the stands in Omaha. Ziegler, too, hosted an ill girl from the Make-a-Wish Foundation at the trials.

"She's gotten more out of that relationship than you can imagine," her father said. "It's important to her."

So, too, is her swimming. At the trials, Ziegler made the team by finishing second to Hoff in both the 400 and the 800. She swam her best time ever in the 400. "I was really happy about that," she said, and there is room, still, for improvement in Beijing.

There were, though, extenuating circumstances that led to her seemingly substandard performance in the 800, in which she swam almost seven seconds slower than her personal best, losing to Hoff by nearly five seconds. For one, Benecki was so confident Ziegler could make the team in the event -- "That was the goal for trials," Ziegler said -- that he had her train hard right through that week, eschewing the normal "taper" that is customary prior to a big meet. The idea, Benecki said, was to make Ziegler her best in Beijing, not Omaha.

Then, on July 5, the day of the 800 final, Ziegler started to feel a bit ill. Her condition worsened the next day. "Thank God she wasn't swimming Sunday night," Don Ziegler said. "She might have had to scratch."

Ziegler balanced the joy of making the Olympic team in her second event with the misery she was about to feel. She spent all of the final day of the trials resting, trying to get better. But July 7, when the rest of the team headed to Palo Alto, Calif., for the first training camp, she and Benecki remained in Omaha, where they visited the hospital. Ziegler got a three-day pack of antibiotics, and was on her way a day later.

Presumably, she will arrive here both healthy and rested.

"If we don't taper for Beijing," she said, "I'll be looking for a new coach."

She smiled and laughed about it, because she trusts Benecki's approach. Yet how coach and athlete manage the days before Ziegler's first Olympics will contribute to how she performs here, and thus with how she is perceived by the American public.

Back home? It'll hardly make a difference.

"She's been blessed with a God-given talent," Don Ziegler said. "It's a nice, storybook journey. If she does well at the Olympics, that's great. If she does her best and comes home with a fourth and a seventh, that's okay. It might not be okay for [the media] or other people outside.

"But for us, each time she swims, we give her a big hug and kiss and tell her, 'Have a great time.' In our little family circle, that means have fun, and if you swim your best time, that'd be good, too. But just go out and do whatever you can do, and we'll be happy."

Because either way, when she returns from China to Virginia -- whether her 12 minutes 30 seconds yield success or not -- fall semester classes at George Mason will await. Win or lose, her people will, too.