Jendrick's back in familiar waters

At 22, swimmer Megan (Quann) Jendrick seems a little young for a where-is-she-now story.

As it turns out, the real story isn't where she has been but where she is heading.

Six years after a precocious 16-year-old from Puyallup won two Olympic gold medals in Sydney, and just two years after she missed qualifying for the Athens Games by 11 hundredths of a second and stepped away from competitive swimming, Jendrick is back in the pool.

She is training vigorously with an eye on the future despite three stress fractures, hoping to add to the 26 American and world records she has set in her career. Part of her plan includes competing in this week's Spring Championships, a five-day event for elite U.S. swimmers starting today at the King County Aquatics Center in Federal Way. Jendrick will compete Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Jendrick sees the meet, a non-qualifying event in advance of the U.S. National Championships in August, as another stepping-stone on her comeback trail. She is clear about her overall ambitions: "To make the 2008 Olympic team and record my best times in my best events, the 100 and 200 breaststroke."

Jendrick, who was married in December 2004 and still lives in Puyallup, sounds self-assured, not cocky, when she talks about being ranked third in the world in the 50-meter breaststroke last year and seventh in the 100 breast.

Spring championships


Where: King County Aquatics Center, Federal Way

When: Today, preliminary heats, 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, preliminary heats, 9 a.m.; final heats, 5:30 p.m. Complete schedule: usaswimming.org

Who: An estimated 700 swimmers, including five past American Olympians and more than 30 members of previous National Junior Teams.

Swimmers to watch: Megan Jendrick (formerly Quann), 22, two gold medals in 2000 Olympic Games; Katie Hoff, 16, current American record holder in the 200-meter individual medley who will compete in six events (50, 100 and 400 freestyle; 200 butterfly; 200 and 400 IM); Allison Wagner, 28, 1996 Olympic silver medalist in the 400 IM, making a comeback after retiring in 2000; 2004 Olympians Kalyn Keller and Rhi Jeffery; Chip Peterson, 10-kilometer gold medalist at the 2005 World Championships, the first American male to win an open-water world title since 1991; 17 UW swimmers (nine women, eight men), including Brittany Epperson, an NCAA Championships participant two weeks ago.

Daily tickets: Adults $5 (preliminaries), $7 (finals); students/children $3 (preliminaries), $5 (finals). All-session passes: Adults $40; students/children $30. Call for info: 206-296-4444.

"It's good to know that at 22 I'm still one of the top swimmers in the world," she says. "At the end of this year, I'd like to be ranked No. 1 in the world in my best events [the 100 and 200 breast], and to do it I'd have to break the world record in both of them."

Improbable? Not really, Jendrick says.

"The world record in the 100 has already been broken twice this year," she says, "and it was broken in the 200, too. The record in the 100 got broken four times in one year. It's crazy. My husband and I have wondered just how much lower the world record can go. We don't know — just however low we can take it."

Jendrick couldn't have felt much lower than she did at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials, when she finished third in the 100 breaststroke by the tiniest of margins. Only the top two finishers, Amanda Beard and Bremerton native Tara Kirk, advanced to Athens.

"A reporter gave me a photo of the finish," she says. "At the wall, the three of us had our hands maybe 2 inches apart. It was amazingly close. I just happened to be the third one to touch."

Ineligible to compete as a collegian because she accepted prize money and sponsorship in 2000, Jendrick stopped training after the 2004 trials and took up coaching, mentoring youth swimmers at King Aquatic Club under coach Sean Hutchinson and conducting clinics and camps. She also married high-school sweetheart Nathan Jendrick, a writer and personal trainer.

Nathan, meanwhile, did a little matchmaking of his own. Posing as Megan, he fired off an e-mail to Hutchinson to see if her boss would also be interested in being her coach. Next, Nathan secretly set up a meeting.

The soon-to-be-wed couple had just finished meeting someone at a Federal Way coffee shop, when Hutchinson showed up.

"So I hear you want to swim again," he said.

Megan, seeing the smile on her fiancé's face, found herself grinning and saying something surprising: "Yeah, I guess I do."

"I had been thinking about it, but I never seriously thought about it until then," she recalls. "But after seeing my swimmers at their meets, it made me miss the sport so much."

Jendrick had not trained in eight months when she reentered the pool on Jan. 5, 2005.

"I had no expectations," she says.

Ten days later, on her 21st birthday, Jendrick swam her fastest practice time in the 100 breaststroke after a challenge from her coach.

"I was amazed," says Jendrick, one of only two women in history to swim a 100-yard breaststroke in under 59 seconds. "I was so excited that I could go that fast so soon. It dawned on me that if I'm relaxed, maybe I can do really well again."

Hutchinson changed Jendrick's old two-a-day training grind to a single, 3 ˝-hour daily session.

"I can sleep in and get a lot more rest," she says. "I actually look forward to practice now.

Jendrick says her competitive instincts have been renewed.

"It was a challenge after the 2000 Olympics," she says. "To win gold there is the very pinnacle of success. No meet after that ever felt as important.

"I had gone from chasing swimmers to the person being chased, and that was kind of hard getting used to. It made me nervous at meets. Now, I don't even look at other swimmers. It takes the pressure off me. I just want to get faster."

She says her age is not a concern. When she was 16 and part of the 2000 400 medley relay that shaved more than three seconds off a 6-year-old world record, her teammates were B.J. Bedford, 27; Jenny Thompson, 28; and Dara Torres, 33.

"Women can definitely get faster as you get older until some time in your 30s," Jendrick says. "I can feel myself getting faster. I've accomplished a lot, but I feel I still have so much more to give."

Jendrick will have to do so while coping with multiple stress fractures — two in her right leg, one in her left knee — she suspects were suffered during a ski trip late in 2004.

Jendrick can cycle but not run and has been cautioned that, even with the low-impact nature of swimming, her condition could have long-term consequences unless she rests her legs. Her plan is to maintain her training until nationals in August, rest for an undetermined time, then resume training for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials.

"I need to take some time off, but that's something I'm not willing to do right now," she says. "The pain is off and on, but I can live with it.

"I'm swimming better now than ever before. I'm recording some of my best times ever. My husband will look at my times and say, 'Do you realize what you just did?' I love to hear that. I know I can break more records. I know I can get better."