Word: krayzelburg
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...world champions don't just show up. Of all sports, swimming is the most measured, timed, predictable. There aren't supposed be surprises. Yet here was a big surprise. Schubert, too, became a fast convert. He offered a scholarship. "This was a totally different level of competition for me," Krayzelburg says. "When I showed up, I was the fifth-fastest backstroker on the team. I wasn't eligible for my first year, so I only could swim in the little, 25-meter pool every day, while the team practiced in the big pool. That was my pool, the little pool...
...time he had finished his sophomore season, in the spring of 1996, he was on a fast rise. He went to the U.S. Olympic Trials in Indianapolis that March and caused a great stir when he had the second-best time in the 200-meter heats. Krayzelburg? From USC? There wasn't even a thumbnail biography of him in the meet's voluminous press materials. Even Krayzelburg was surprised. The top two swimmers in the final would qualify for Atlanta. He was in a position to make it. His head buzzed with the unexpected thought. Was he ready for this...
...body was. His mind wasn't. Starting too fast, trying to do too much, Krayzelburg finished fifth in the final. If he'd simply repeated his morning time, he'd have made the team. Trojans teammate Brad Bridgewater went to Atlanta and became the Olympic champion. "I called Lenny from Atlanta the night Brad won the 200," says Schubert, who will coach the U.S. men's team in Sydney. "I told him, four years from now that could be him." "The crazy thing is that it could have been him in Atlanta," Blumkin says. "The trials were such a breakthrough...
...growth has continued. In 1998, Krayzelburg won golds in both the 100 and 200 backstrokes at the world championships, in Perth. Last year in Sydney he broke world records in the 100 and 200. At the U.S. Olympic Trials in Indianapolis this month, he won both the 100 and 200 backstroke. Without having swum an Olympic race, Krayzelburg has become the U.S.'s most recognizable male swimmer, signed to a six-figure Speedo endorsement contract. "Two years ago I went back to Odessa with my parents and my sister," Lenny says. "I went to the pool ... the place where...
...resemble his present family. He says he owes everything to his father and mother. His father is a cook at a hospital. His mother is a technician in the pharmacy at a hospital. "It would still be best for my father and my mother to be back in Odessa," Krayzelburg says. "That is where they would be happier. That's where their friends are. They came here for my sister and me. To give us the opportunity...