Hansen Sinks To 4th in 200 Breaststroke

OMAHA, July 3 -- The discussion beforehand surrounded one issue and one issue only: Would Brendan Hansen break the world record in the 200-meter breaststroke? Hansen held the mark for nearly four years before his arch rival, Japan's Kosuke Kitajima, topped it just last month. The mission was clear: Snatch the record back at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials here, and send a trans-Pacific message in advance of the Beijing Olympics.

Yet there was Hansen on Thursday night, his best event completed, grabbing on to one of the lane lines lest he sink to the bottom of the Qwest Center pool. "I don't know what to tell you," he said afterward, still dumbfounded.

The telling, then, is left to others. On a night when Dara Torres, a 41-year-old mother, took another step toward a fifth Olympics, Hansen all but tied an anvil to his ankles over the final 50 meters of his race, finishing an unfathomable fourth. Two of his training partners at the University of Texas, Scott Spann and Eric Shanteau, snared the spots on the Olympic team. Though Hansen had already qualified for the Games by winning the 100 breaststroke earlier in the week, he was left to explain his role in what, to this point, this meet had lacked: a monumental upset.

"I didn't have a very good feeling about just warmup and everything in general," Hansen said. "These guys, they just brought it. They really did. . . . I might have been worrying too much about what I needed to do to get this done and didn't worry about the guys that were coming after me at the same time."

There is no shortage of methods to explain the magnitude of this surprise. Hansen set the world mark at the last Olympic trials, then twice topped his own record, setting a standard of 2 minutes 8.50 seconds in August 2006 that stood until Kitajima's stellar swim in June.

The battle between the two is such that a large Japanese media contingent is here, merely to stalk Hansen. An indication that Hansen was capable of such a fold came, though, at the Athens Games. After Hansen set the record at the trials, then 2:09.04, he could not stare down the specter of Kitajima in the Olympics. He swam slower by 1.8 seconds -- a swimming eternity -- and settled for bronze.

Indeed, had Hansen merely swum his time from the 2004 trials Thursday, he would have cruised into the Olympics, because Spann's winning time was just 2:09.97. Hansen, though, touched in -- get this -- 2:11.37, even after being under his U.S. record pace at the midway point.

"We don't know why he did that," said his coach, Eddie Reese. "We don't have a clue."

Spann, meanwhile, had a simple strategy. "Stay with Brendan," he said, "and then really attack."

How much of the outcome was a result of that attack, and how much came from Hansen's incomprehensibly slow final 50 meters -- which he covered in 36.15 seconds, more than seven seconds slower than his opening 50 -- will never be quantifiable. But those 50 meters demonstrated why the trials can take expectations, chew them up and spit them out.

"It's difficult to watch," said Natalie Coughlin, who was on the 2004 Olympic team with Hansen. "You want everyone to make the team. It's just the cruel nature of the meet."

Coughlin, in contrast, was part of the most unusual event of the trials thus far, even if it was far more predictable than Hansen's collapse. Torres and Coughlin, the bronze medalist in the 100 freestyle in Athens, were preparing for their semifinal heat in the event Thursday night when the 25-year-old Californian, who already qualified for Beijing in two events, sent a message to Torres.

"I was telling Dara that right now, I'm the oldest on the team, and she's 16 years my senior," Coughlin said. "So she needs to bring the median up."

Whether Torres can do that by finishing first or second in Friday's final remains to be seen. "I have no idea what to expect," Torres said Thursday night, holding her 2-year-old daughter, Tessa, after she qualified second in a personal-best 53.57 seconds, one-tenth of a second slower than Coughlin.

The swim, though, capped a remarkable day for Torres, swimming in her first trials since 2000, her fifth since she first appeared as a 17-year-old in 1984, when Coughlin was not yet 2. When she stepped to the starting blocks in the morning preliminary heats, she said she felt like a newcomer.

"I felt like I was at my first Olympic trials again," Torres said. "I didn't think I was going to be that nervous. But I was extremely nervous."

Torres's best event is the 50 freestyle, which she will contest beginning Saturday. But she knows, from her experience at trials past, that even if she owns the U.S. record in the event, she is not ensured a spot on the team.

That was painfully evident after Hansen's swim. Twenty-five meters from the wall, Spann was even with him on his left, Shanteau there on his right.

"I was pushing," Hansen said. But so was Spann.

"The last 15 meters, I got so tired," Spann said. "But all I could think in my head was, 'This is summing up four years, these last strokes.' "

With that, he swam past Hansen, who instantly realized the misery to follow. "I just said, 'You little son of a [gun],' " Hansen said. "It happens, you know."

It had not happened at this meet, not an upset like this. And because it did, Spann and Shanteau, not Hansen, will be left to take on Kitajima.

"I'm going to tell these guys what they need to do to beat him," Hansen said, "because if I can't do it, then I'm going to make sure that they do."