Monday, May 3, 1999
Special to the Star-Bulletin
Keiko Price will swim a relay with Olympic gold
medalist Jenny Thompson at the Pan Pacific Games.
Mililani High alumna Keiko
By Pat Bigold
Price is in the running to become
the first Hawaii swimmer to
compete in the Olympics since 1976.
Star-BulletinHAWAII has not produced an Olympic swimmer since 1976. Mililani's Keiko Price, an All-American sprinter at UCLA, is taking giant strokes toward changing that.
Her latest and most positive stroke will take her to Sydney in August for the Pan Pacific Games. It's the most important competition before the 2000 Olympics are held in that city.
"The people who go to the Pan Pacs are the core group they're looking at to make the Olympics," said Price's UCLA coach, Cyndi Gallagher. "She's going there with Olympians and American record holders."
Price, who has been in the U.S. Olympic Committee's "Project Sydney" for the past few years, earned her trip to the Pan Pacific Games (Aug. 23-29) by finishing fourth last year in the 100-meter freestyle (56.40 seconds) at the U.S. nationals.
She is also qualified to swim in the 50- and 200-meter freestyles at the Pan Pacific Games, as well as to join five-time Olympic gold medalist Jenny Thompson on the 4x100-meter relay team.
"I just got back from a camp at Colorado Springs where the whole U.S. team had to go for a bonding weekend," said Price in telephone interview.
"Everybody who's been in the Olympics was there -- Jenny Thompson, Cristina Teuscher, Ashley Tappin, Brooke Bennett . . . Lenny Krayzelburg, Brad Bridgewater, Tom Dolan -- everybody."
While she normally anchors the Bruins' relay teams, Price said she expects someone like Thompson will have that honor in Sydney. "I swam the slowest time to qualify," she said.
Price's chances of making the 2000 Olympic 100 freestyle team are rated excellent because the top six swimmers at the U.S. trials will be taken. That could mean Price has a chance to snap Hawaii's swimming medal drought, which dates back to 1956.
"It's long overdue,"" said Keala O'Sullivan Watson, who was the last Hawaii athlete to win an Olympic medal in a pool. Watson took a springboard diving bronze in 1968 (Mexico City).
"But the world is a lot more competitive now than it ever was," she said.
The last non-medalist Olympic swimmer from Hawaii was Chris Woo, now a Honolulu dentist. He made the team in 1976 (Montreal).
The last Hawaii athletes to actually swim for Olympic medals were Ford Konno and Bill Woolsey, who shared silvers in the 800-meter relay in Melbourne.
"I guarantee the American women will win the Olympic 100-meter relay next year," said Rowdy Gaines, the triple gold medalist (1984) who did network TV commentary for swimming in Atlanta.
That's an encouraging forecast for Price.
Whether she makes the 100 free squad as a top four swimmer or one of the two alternates, Price would share in any medal the U.S. wins.
In long course competition, Price is ranked No. 28 in the world in the 100 free and No. 7 nationally.
In the 50 free, one of her two specialties at UCLA, she is ranked 60th in the world and 20th nationally.
Gallagher and Gaines say Price's lower status in the 50 does not mean she's out of the running for one of the event's two Olympic berths.
"She has a lot of room to grow before August of next year," said Gallagher. "Women get better as they get older. That should be in bold print. They get stronger and they get smarter."
Gaines said anything can happen in the 50 free at the trials. It's an event with little margin for error and long shots have been known to make the grade at the trials.
But Price clearly prefers the 100 free.
"The 50 sometimes takes me a while to get going, but the 100 is just a long stretch and I can build into it," she said.
She won the Pac-10 title in the 100 free (measured in yards at the collegiate level) this year and set the UCLA school record in it last year: 49.38 seconds.
That performance was one of the highlights of her college career because it earned her a berth in the 1998 NCAA finals. Unfortunately for Price, she was disqualified on a false start.
"I lost my balance," she said.
She did not make the NCAA finals this year.
Gallagher, who produced 1996 800 freestyle relay gold medalist Annette Salmeen, said she considers the 5-foot-10, 170-pound Price to be an awesome physical specimen.
"She is one of the strongest, most powerful women swimmers in the nation," said Gallagher.
Asked what areas she feels she has developed most in since leaving Mililani, Price said, "I have more strength, more endurance and my stroke has changed too."
She said her stroke rate has increased, especially this past season, when she recorded 22 first-place finishes for the Bruins.
Price, who is still a junior, has been lifting weights since enrolling at UCLA.
"I didn't lift in Hawaii," said Price. "We do a lot of power-lifting like squats and bench pressing."
Gallagher believes only Thompson can compare with Price's sheer physical power.
"Keiko has height, strength, and distance per stroke," said Gaines. "That's a lethal combination in swimming. You can't ask for anything more."
Keiko Price
Junior at UCLA, age 20.
