Go to a list of Local Olympians

Go to Olympics Section

Go to Sports Section

Henderson Floats Like a Butterfly

Mark Henderson had lived with the disappointment for four years. He had made a big mistake at the 1992 U.S. Olympic trials, going out too fast, well below world-record pace, in the 100-meter butterfly. In the last half of the race, he "brought it home in an ambulance," he said. That's another way of saying he finished seventh.

Tonight Henderson again stepped onto the block at the Olympic trials, at the same pool, swimming the same event. The result was very different.

Henderson, 26, who grew up in Fort Washington and was a 1987 graduate of Friendly High, did not go out too fast. In fact, halfway through the race, he was last. But he came on with a ferocious burst of energy in the final 25 meters to finish second in 53.51 seconds and qualify for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

John Hargis, a virtual unknown who swims at Auburn, won the event in 53.42. Just missing the Olympic team were third-place finisher Jason Lancaster of Michigan (53.73 seconds), followed by Byron Davis (53.84), who would have become the first black swimmer to make a U.S. Olympic team. Davis took the race out in world-record pace, but tied up at the end and did not finish well.

Henderson, a blunt, burly veteran with the look of a middle linebacker, was giving the Olympics a final shot. He has been on countless national teams, winning gold medals at the 1994 world championships and the 1993 and 1995 Pan Pacifics. Eighteen months ago, he joined the U.S. resident national team, a U.S. Swimming program developed by a grant from the U.S. Olympic Committee. Ten top swimmers were headquartered at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

In addition to Henderson, Davis was on the resident team, as was Summer Sanders, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist. As Henderson blasted to the wall, Sanders was standing on the deck, watching nervously. She had just finished a disappointing seventh in one of her best events, the 200 individual medley. Allison Wagner won it, with Kristine Quance finishing a close second. Both already had made the Olympic team in other events.

"I completely forgot what I had done," Sanders said. "Mark almost gave me a heart attack going out in eighth place."

When the scoreboard registered that Henderson finished second, Sanders came racing toward him. He jumped out of the pool and hugged her. They later revealed that they have been dating since last August.

"If I had scripted how this day would have ended," Henderson said, "this is the way I would have had it."

After his collapse in 1992, Henderson put in his hardest work on finishing his races, "the last four strokes to the wall," Curl said.

He also had to put on blinders, figuratively, to stay composed in this race.

"He just had good control," said Curl, who began coaching Henderson when he was 12. "He didn't worry about the underwater guys [several swimmers swam a good portion of the first 50 underwater] or about Byron going out fast. He swam his own race, and it worked."

Henderson quit for eight months after the previous trials, tended bar in Berkeley, Calif., where he went to the University of California, and, when he came back to the sport, swam in a municipal pool with all kinds of junk on the bottom. Now, he was headed to the Olympics.

"I don't want to go to the Olympics to be a part of the Olympics," he said. "I want to go to . . . win the gold."