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Janet Evans Takes Last Laps

ATLANTA -- At the end of the last lap of Janet Evans' career, she ducked under the buoys and floated over to embrace the cocky teen who backed up a boast to take her place.

In that poignant moment in the pool, America's greatest and most beloved woman swimmer let go of any lingering animosity she harbored toward Brooke Bennett, let go of a lifetime's work and symbolically passed the torch to the new gold medalist.

Beaten badly in the 800-meter freestyle after failing to get to the 400 final, Evans left the Summer Games with nothing but wonderful memories and not a single regret about coming here.

``I wouldn't have given it up for the world,'' Evans said with uncharacteristic emotion, her cheeks dappled with tears even as she smiled. ``It's still been my favorite Olympics so far. It's been awesome.

``It's weird because after winning gold medals and stuff ... I think I've learned a lot now about what the Olympics are really about. It sounds kinda cliche, but it's been a true Olympic experience for me. I've had the highs and I've had the lows. This is what it's about for an athlete. It's been quite a ride.''

Janet Evans swam into our lives eight years ago, a skinny teen-ager skittering joyfully over the water as if she were born to it, capturing more than gold after gold after gold.

There is something about certain champions that elevates them above all others, and it cannot be measured merely by medals won or times posted. The great ones, like Evans, all have that charismatic quality that lets us share in their exhilaration or their sorrow.

Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. Mary Lou Retton and Dorothy Hamill. Dan Jansen and Bonnie Blair. Muhammad Ali, even to this day.

Evans won hearts all over the globe at Seoul with her wide-eyed charm and vivacious smile, her sheer speed and boundless energy. She didn't just claim three Olympic golds, she broke three world records. And she made it look so easy.

There was nothing easy Thursday night about Evans' final race. At 24, she churned with greater effort and less efficiency than she ever did, the delicate balance between buoyancy and power slightly out of kilter.

The 800 freestyle is one of the races Evans owned for so long. Her name was all over the board. Olympic record holder, 8:20.20, Seoul, 1988. World record holder, 8:16.22, Tokyo, 1989 -- the record she's proudest of, and the one she thinks may last the longest.

Now she was laboring to a sixth place finish in 8:38.91, futilely chasing one more gold to add to the fourth she grabbed in Barcelona.

Three lanes away, another American teen-ager was coming of age in the Olympics, swimming as smoothly, if not as fast, as Evans once did.

Bennett, 16, won her first Olympic gold in 8:27.89, beating Germany's Dagmar Hase by more than two seconds, and the Netherlands' Kirsten Vlieghuis by nearly three.

Bennett had been aiming at Evans' supremacy in long-distance races for a while, suggesting impudently last year that Evans was afraid of her because ``she knows there's someone coming up to take her place.'' Evans' rejoinder was succinct and tart: ``When I was 15, I had two world records.'' She emphasized the word ``two,'' knowing Bennett had none.

So they came into the Olympics with a little personal history between them, and they left it there -- in the past.

After their hug in the pool, Bennett showed graciousness in victory as she spoke of Evans.

``Janet Evans is always going to be the queen of swimming, even 20 years down the road,'' Bennett said. ``I'm only starting to peak up. She has the world records, she's got gold medals, she's got national titles. Maybe one day I'll have just as many gold medals and a world record.''

Bennett just may do that, but few swimmers will ever capture the public's heart the way Evans did.

Just before the start of her last race, Evans could look up at the scoreboard and read the Olympic Creed penned by the founder of the modern games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin:

``The most important thing in the Olympics is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.''

It was the creed Evans lived by from the beginning, and the one she fully understood at the end.