A Long Swim to China

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL By Kevin Helliker May 16, 2008 Last week, about 55 men plunged into a Spanish river for the highest-stakes 10-kilometer swim in history: The top-10 finishers would win a ticket to the event's Olympic debut in Beijing. As it turned out, the swimmer widely expected to win -- Australia's Grant Hackett -- finished 15th. And in a triumph that went largely unnoticed in the U.S., an unknown named Mark Warkentin finished seventh, making him the first (and so far only) member of America's 2008 Olympic swim team. "There's not a person in the world that thought I had a shot at the 2008 Olympics," says Mr. Warkentin, 28 years old, who had tried and failed to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team in 1996, 2000 and 2004. His swimming career at the University of Southern California had been undistinguished. His transformation from an unremarkable pool swimmer to an open-water Olympian reflects a determination rooted in family history. His father, a national champion decathlete named John Warkentin, had longed to be an Olympian. "During 10 years of their marriage my parents were so focused on him making the Olympics," says Mark Warkentin. "And he never did." What enabled the younger Mr. Warkentin to succeed was the International Olympic Committee's 2005 decision to launch a 10K open-water race in Beijing. In the pool, he routinely lost races to slower swimmers who executed stronger surges off the wall. That all-important maneuver -- the flip turn -- bedeviled Mr. Warkentin. "I was terrible at it," he says. Waters Without Walls In waters without walls, however, he thrived. He demolished the field in a few amateur races and won his first international professional competition. Last October, when the U.S. held its 10K Olympic trials, Mr. Warkentin won, landing a spot in last week's international qualifying race. Of the four Americans -- two men, two women -- who swam in Seville, only Mr. Warkentin qualified for a berth in Beijing. During the first three-quarters of last week's race, Mr. Warkentin hung back, trailing as many as 20 swimmers. Entering the final mile, however, "I worked my way into the top 12," he says. Aquatic races that last hours often are decided in the final seconds. Finishing strong, however, is typically dependent on a tactic that is foreign to pool swimmers: pit stops. Three times as he passed feeding stations last week, Mr. Warkentin spun onto his back to receive from his coach a squirt of Gatorade or dollop of energy gel. Each feeding cost him about two seconds -- by pool standards an eternity. But during the last quarter mile, those fuel injections -- which some contestants skipped -- paid off for Mr. Warkentin. "In the final three minutes of the race, I passed five or six guys," he says. He finished 16 seconds behind the winner, Russia's Vladimir Dyatchin, who came in at 1:53:21. He also finished eight spots ahead of the presumptive favorite, Australia's Mr. Hackett. A two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 1,500-meter -- heretofore the longest swim at the Olympics -- Mr. Hackett also holds the world record in that event. He has been called the greatest distance swimmer in history. Mr. Hackett's performance last week suggests that such prowess isn't easily exported outside the pool. Not only did he fail to break the top 10, but after the race he was disqualified for intentional body contact. In a sport notorious for vicious jabs, such penalties aren't uncommon. But in interviews with the Australian media, Mr. Hackett suggested that his infractions were minor next to the bruising he took from other competitors. Mr. Warkentin doesn't doubt it. To make it known that encounters with him will be painful, he says, "I've delivered a few beatings," always in retaliation. Four days after the Seville 10K, Mr. Warkentin took second place in a five-hour 25K world championship race, finishing only half a second behind the winner. That performance boosted his confidence about winning a medal in Beijing. In the Olympics, Mr. Warkentin says he plans to swim a "riskier" race. That means swimming near the front of the pack throughout, so that a strong finish could land him a medal, ideally gold. The risk: Swimming harder in the first three-quarters could leave him depleted at the finish. Amid a season in which Speedo's new LZR suit has been hailed as enormously advantageous, Mr. Warkentin says that most of the swimmers who finished ahead of him in Seville wore other brands. He himself is sponsored by TYR, whose suit he says he will confidently wear in Beijing. His main financial sponsor has been his father, the failed Olympian, who is now a successful businessman. "It's a great experience to share your victory with someone who suffered a lot of failures," says Mark Warkentin. Read the Wall Street Journal article here.