OLYMPIC SCENE / ATLANTA 1996 : He’s Resurfacing After Hitting Bottom

Swimmer Chad Carvin’s indomitable will was broken last October when his times went from world-class to mediocre within weeks while training at the University of Arizona.

It was difficult to accept for the U.S. record-holder in the 1,000-meter freestyle. So much so, he no longer wanted to live.

“The days were terrible,” he said. “I was always down on myself.”

Depression set in after Carvin, 21, of Laguna Hills, tested negative for mononucleosis and Valley fever and doctors could find nothing wrong. He continued training but his times got so bad he could no longer take it.

Last month, Carvin tried to overdose on over-the-counter sleeping pills. A roommate found him at home in time and he was hospitalized.

During his stay, doctors discovered he was suffering from a career-threatening condition known as viral cardiomyopathy, a deterioration of the heart wall by an unknown virus. He was ordered to do very little exercise until at least April. With the U.S. Olympic trials in March, Carvin’s chances of reaching Atlanta ended.

Carvin still has not reflected on the events, but admits that he might have been so focused on swimming it consumed him.

“Everything that I wanted so bad related to swimming,” he said.

Carvin is not supposed to walk more than 20 minutes a day, including going to class or to the refrigerator. On the days he walks to his classes, he is tired.

“And it’s not like I even did anything,” he said.

For an athlete who used to do 50-mile bike rides on his days off from swimming, it is a major lifestyle chance. Doctors want to see if the heart wall can recover with no exertion over the next three months. Carvin is hoping for complete recovery and a return to swimming. But he realizes he might never swim again.

“I still wonder how I got it, or why it happened,” said Carvin, who is working toward a degree in finance.

Arizona Coach Frank Busch said that for some athletes disappointment becomes a tragedy.

“Chad put his heart and soul into it every day on the deck,” Busch said. “That’s what separated him from other athletes. It’s an admirable quality, but also a dangerous one.”

Said Carvin: “It does scare me a little bit to mean so much. It’s just a weird thing. Everything that was so easy became the biggest struggle.”

NEWSMAKER

It was apropos that a cable channel was showing the movie, “Big Girls Don’t Cry . . . They Get Even,” last week. The film’s star, Hillary Wolf, 18, of Chicago, weathered numerous complaints from her chief rival, Sherrie Phillips, to make the U.S. Olympic judo team last weekend in Colorado Springs, Col.

Phillips, 32, long the top 106-pound fighter, argued that Wolf’s No. 1-ranking was unfair because the teen earned some of her points by winning the junior world championships in Egypt in November 1994.

The U.S. Olympic Committee agreed and changed the selection process for judo’s international teams. The junior worlds and World University Games no longer can count toward senior national rankings.

“We thought it would end at that,” said Wolf, who also had major roles in the “Home Alone” movies. “It didn’t.”

Phillips then complained that Wolf might not have made the world championship team--and gained more valuable points for Olympic seeding purposes--had she not been ranked No. 1. The reason Phillips was so vocal was because the top-seeded fighter gets two chances to retain the position whereas everyone else has one.

All of this infighting eventually did not matter. Phillips, ranked second, was upset by No. 3 Nicole Okino, a San Jose State student, during the trials. The rivals never met.

Afterward, Phillips told Wolf: “You know, I spent so much time worrying about you, I forgot about everybody else.”

LAUREL WREATH

Synchronized swimmer Becky Dyroen-Lancer of San Jose won the FINA Prize for 1995 as the top athlete in the four Olympic aquatic sports--swimming, diving, water polo and synchronized swimming. She is the first American to win the award since diver Greg Louganis in 1983.

THORN WREATH

FINA, swimming’s international governing body, voted last month in Brazil to increase the suspension for first-time steroid offenders from two to four years--unless an athlete refuses to be tested. In what some swimming leaders are calling a major loophole, those who do not cooperate will be given two-year bans. So, any athlete asked to give a urine specimen who knows he or she is on drugs can simply refuse in order to get the lighter sentence.

FACTOID

NBC paid $456 million for the U.S. television rights to the Atlanta Games. For the rights to the first Summer Olympics televised in 1960 from Rome, CBS paid $394,000.

THIS WEEK

Gold medal winners Janet Evans, Lea Loveless and Jenny Thompson will be joined by potential Olympic swimmers Christy Hayeenck of UCLA and Kristine Quance of USC on Friday and Saturday during Pacific 10 Conference dual meets featuring USC, UCLA, California and Stanford and the schools’ club teams. The short- course meet will be held Friday at UCLA, the long course Saturday at USC. Competition begins at 1 p.m. each day.

Olympic Scene Notes

During a visit last week to Cuba, Muhammad Ali visited the gym named after Roberto Balado. He was the former amateur super-heavyweight world champion who died in a 1994 highway accident. . . . Hurdler Danny Harris, a native Southern Californian, has returned to Ames, Iowa, to work with the man who coached him at Iowa State, Steve Lynn. Harris, who sat out three seasons under suspension for a positive cocaine test, worked for the last two seasons with Coach Bob Kersee while completing two drug rehabilitation programs and appears on the verge of again becoming one of the world’s elite at age 30.

British Olympic 100-meter sprint champion Linford Christie, who announced last year that he would not compete at Atlanta, might reconsider. He has committed to two indoor meets in Great Britain next month. . . . Two-time Olympian Cathy O’Brien will probably miss the women’s marathon trials scheduled for Feb. 10 at Columbia, S.C., because of a leg injury. . . . Like Joan Benoit Samuelson, who will run in the U.S. marathon trials, Rosa Mota, the 1988 women’s marathon champion, is contemplating a comeback. But her time is limited by her recent election to a four-year term in Portugal’s Parliament. . . . Margaret Jenkins, a U.S. Olympian in 1928 and ‘32, died last week at Jackson, Calif. She was 92. She was the U.S. record holder in the women’s javelin in 1928 but competed in the discus at Amsterdam because there was no competition in her primary event. She finished eighth.

Germany became the fifth team to qualify for the women’s gymnastics tournament at the Olympics with a stunning victory over Russia in the European qualifying finals. Cuba, Brazil, China and the United States already qualified. . . . The barnstorming U.S. women’s national basketball team is completing a week-long trip to the former Soviet Union. Coach Tara VanDeever scheduled games against club teams where officiating would favor the hosts to give her players experience in unfriendly environments. This team’s problem, however, will be the expectations of the home crowd this summer in Atlanta. The tour ends Wednesday in Kiev.

Times staff writer Randy Harvey contributed to to this story.