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| Crocker hopes to take lightly traveled road from Maine to Sydney
SportsLine.com wire reports
INDIANAPOLIS -- Ian Crocker didn't exactly grow up in a swimming hotbed.
The 17-year-old is used to training in a pool that's not even half as long as
Olympic-sized, with lanes so narrow he can pull himself along the markers if he
likes.
"We use what we have," coach Sharon Power said, "and dream a lot."
Crocker is the first product of a Maine-based program -- that's right, the
lobster state -- to earn a spot in the U.S. Olympic trials. He showed Monday
he's more than a mere oddity, breaking Matt Biondi's 12-year-old record in the
100-meter butterfly at 52.82 seconds.
Not bad for a guy who was looking ahead to the 2004 Olympics just a few
months ago. Then, while competing at an April meet in Seattle, he realized it
might be OK to push up his timetable.
"Before that meet, he told me that 2004 should be his year," Power said.
"Part of the way through the meet, he told me he really should try for the
2000 team. After the meet was over, he said he'd be stupid not to try for the
team."
Crocker, who just graduated from high school in Portland, Maine, and plans
to attend the University of Texas, was the first 15-year-old to break 1:50 in
the 100 butterfly in 1998. Last year, he jumped from 70th in the world to 38th.
Now, he might be ready to take that lightly traveled road from Maine to Sydney.
Crocker shrugged off the disadvantage of doing most of his work in a 25-yard
pool during the cold winter months. Occasionally, he has access to a slightly
longer 25-meter pool -- half the Olympic length -- but is forced to train early
in the morning and late at night.
"We have water," he quipped. "That's a plus."
Crocker and his team, Portland Porpoise, can make the 45-minute drive to a
regulation pool in neighboring New Hampshire. But that's an outdoor facility,
strictly for use in the summer.
Still, he keeps swimming faster and faster.
"He's one of the most talented kids in the U.S. right now," Power said.
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