Summer Sanders hosting Fox's Skating with Celeb

Here is something that seems more sad to me than the Summer Sanders thing. A store called Nebraska Furniture Mart opened here (Kansas City) a couple of years ago. It is based in Omaha and is known for its mega-stores, which carry furniture, large applicances, and electronics. Yesterday and again this evening I saw a TV commercial for Nebraska Furniture Mart. Guess who is going to be at the Kansas City store this Saturday? You guessed it..... MARK SPITZ. They even had a short taped segment of him saying something about how he hoped everyone would come out to see him and the "large selection of Panasonic products."

Well, I don't mind her doing figure skating and this is real chessy stuff since its old pros and the general public skating together, not serious figure skating. Figure skating at the olympic level is very difficult. There are men that do quad jumps and then follow up with a triple jump. Most swimmers here until they watched the olympics don't know how hard its to be able to do the jumps in olympic and world level figure skating.

Originally posted by tjrpatt I think that the media brought that on because they both competed in the 400 IM and I think that the media wanted to tear her down from being so successful at South Korea. That is all that I can remember from that time. I once heard Janet Evans say that she didn't realize there was a feud, only healthy competition.

Originally posted by tjrpatt I am so not happy about Fox giving her this hosting gig. Then again, I was always on Team Evans when the Janet Evans and Summer Sanders feud was happening. The sports media never portrayed Matt Biondi and Tom Yaeger(don't remember his last name that well) feuding with each other. There was never any feud and it was denied by both swimmers and Coach Richard Quick. They swam against each other 4 times in the 400 IM between 1990 and 1992 and Summer won each time. What is interesting is that the first race between the two was at the 1990 Goodwill games and the press considered it a major upset because Janet Evans was the 1988 Olympic Champion and American Record holder. But people in the swimming community knew better. The spring of 1990, as a high school senior, Summer Sanders won the 400 Yard IM at the 1990 Spring Nationals which was the last Nationals held in a short course setting. Janet missed that Nationals because she was sick and had never been defeated since 1986 in a 400 IM at Nationals. Summer Sanders time was a 4:09.79 in that meet compared to 4:07.59 time posted by Janet Evans at the 1990 NCAA meet. Summer enrolled at Stanford in the fall of 1990 and for a very brief period they had the two best swimmers in the country going to the same school. Richard Quick trained then in two separte groups at Stanford with Janet trainning with the distance swimmers. At the 1991 NCAA's they crossed again in the 400 IM and Summer went 4:05.19 breaking Janet Evans NCAA record from the previous year. Janet Evans went 4:11.25 and they went 1-2 in that event. In fact both swimmers were the top 2 scorers in the meet winning the remaining. Even with these performances Stanford lost to Texas for the second year in a row. Coach Mark Schubert was in his 3rd year as the Texas Coach. The year before Texas won by 9 points and that was considered an upset at that time. They lost by more in 1991 even with the two best swimmers. At the end of the college season, Janet Evans announced that she would be giving up her college eligibility because of new NCAA rules limiting collegiate swimming practice time to 20 hours per week. Plus she could sign with an agent and start taking endorsments. The big suprise out of this was in making that announcement, she said she would be leaving Stanford because she was not satisfied with the distance program there and choose to swim under Mark Schubert of Texas, Stanford's main rival. She did however say that Richard Quick should be given credit because she did improve her 200 Free and even won a National Championship in that event. A lot of the press thought she left Stanford because of Sanders and some perceived feud. That was never substantiated. Janet Evans times in the distance events were not improving and she decided to make a change and turn professional and train with Mark in Ausin. When Mark left Austin and went to USC, Janet followed him there and stayed in his program until 1996 when she retired from swimming. Summer Sanders swam only one more year at Stanford and did exactly the same thing in 1992 and gave up the final 2 years of her NCAA eligibility. Stanford won the NCAA in 1993 and had a replacement for Janet Evans named Jenny Thompson who scored the exact same points as Janet did the year previous. The big loser out of all of this was Richard Quick. If all of those swimmers stayed in school they along with Jenny Thompson would have been on the same team in 1993.

I totally forgot those two swam together at Stanford. For some reason I thought Evans swam for USC. It must be because she swam for Schubert who now coaches the USC women.

Thanks for that explanation/story Frank......It appears from this posting and countless others of yours I've read here, that you are perhaps the biggest swimming trivia buff/human encyclopedia of swimming history I've ever run across.....i.e. I'm very impressed with your overall knowledge of swimming history! Newmastersswimmer

thanks for the back story, Skip. When swimming is on tv, they don't give this kind of info. They give you the info that they want to give you. Back then, they gave us the info that they were feuding. Skip, did you hear anything about Janet Evans didn't improve because Richard Quick put her on weight training when she went to college and thus, she never reached her peak levels again. Thanks for the rundown of the Sanders/Evans story.

Now I know the source of the information is incorrect. My source of information was the man himself Michael Phelps. I saw him today at the University of Michigan/Ohio State dual meet at Canham Natatorium in Ann Arbor. There was no announcement but he swam two exibition races today during the breaks in the meet. He swam in the center of the pool in a time trail like setting all by himself. After the meet, there was a meet and greet with people standing in a line to get things signed. I asked him to sign the two meet programs that I had and congratulated him on the good swims and the ten million dollar compensation package that he receives yearly that I read on a swimming website. He looked at me like I was from another planet and said someone knows something neither his agent or himself knows. I said nothing and shook his hand and left the line. The two events he swam were the 200 IM and the 100 Fly. He swam a 1:46.05, missing his pool record from last year by .02 and his splits were :21.93, :25.71, :30.60, and :24.85. He did the 100 Fly in a new pool record of :46.03 and split :21.95 and :24.08. In another exibition race Kleete Keller and Chris Thompson swam a 500 Free. Kleete want 4:19 spliting 2:07 at the (250) half way mark. Chris Thompson went a 4:27. Chis de Young was the star of the Michigan team setting a pool record in the 200 Back at 1:42.83 breaking his own pool record of 1:44.30. The Michigan team won every event except the last event, which was the 200 Free Relay and Bill Wadley's squad won that event. This was the first meet that I have been to where no one left during the diving. Michael got in to warm up and everyone was watching and some people were down by the railing video taping his warm up. At the conclusion of the meet there was no clear out and everyone stayed and watched Bob Bowman as he mounted the deck to put the team thru a light workout before they would get on the bus and head out to Bloomington, Indiana for a dual meet with IU at noon tomorrow. The place was packed with lots of swimming fans.

First of all thanks Jim. I just have a nack at remembering these things. Its too bad I don't have a nack for other complicted things. Tom, I know that the Stanford teams, both men and women have extensive weight training and its been documented in Swimming Technique in the late 1980's. I never heard any specfic complaint that I can remember about weight training in regard to Janet and how it did not contribute to improvement to peak levels. I do remember Richard Quick being asked questions about the specfic training and usually he answered with, we do this as a team, for the team benefits. It usually came off as rah, rah, Stanford. Janet Evans made a statement saying she was not satisfied with the distance training program at Stanford. She did say that with the training she had at the school she was able to improve her 200 Free and sprints. She did her best time of 2:00.67 in the 1991 Word Championships in Perth losing to Hayley Lewis. I bring Haley Lewis up because she was the first one to challenge Janet in the distance events in 5 years. At the 1991 World Championships, Janet won by less than .05 in the 400 Free. At the 1994 World Championships it was even closer in the 800 Free with Janet winning by a less of a margin. No one up to this point had ever challenged Janet Evans in the 3 distance events and after 1991 people started to challenge. After Janet left, Richard Quick said there never was a problem and that they just had there differences. The press did not believe him and that's how this Evans/Sanders feud started. I can believe how Richard could be the peacemaker because in the book "Gold In The Water" by PH Mullen, it was documented that he secretly trained Dara Tores because he felt the workouts with Dara and Jenny Thompson were to intense and not helping either of them and this was how he choose to handle this. However, sooner or later everyone found out and the press had a field day with this. Tom, regarding Michael Phelps, I think the source of the information is incorrect because I have never, ever, heard of a 10 million figure being reported anywhere. Not that the man is a pauper, but 10 million seems a little excessive.

Originally posted by craiglll@yahoo.com What he is up to? what classes he is taking. Based on the $10M per year figure, I'm presuming business and finance classes :) Back to Janet Evans. You know, Janet may not have liked Richard Quick's training techniques, but I think you also have to look at physiological changes with Janet herself. At the Seoul games she was very small. She grew quite a bit in the next few years and it seems like it was hard for her to totally adapt to her new body. Her very high turnover stroke was probably much better suited for her when she was short and skinny.