UNDERDOGS' DAY

ALSO-RANS NO LONGER, THE AMERICAN WOMEN SWIMMERS EXALT IN PAYBACK TIME WITH INDOMITABLE AMY VAN DYKEN

Amy Van Dyken went shopping a few weeks ago and ran into some old high school classmates. The very girls, it happened, who once tried to keep her off the school's relay swim team by complaining to the coach, throwing her clothes in the pool and spitting in her direction. A severe asthmatic, Van Dyken was a skinny girl with a persistent cough who struggled to make it through a race. But a decade of determination later, "it felt good," she says, "to walk into the mall and see these girls who wouldn't swim a relay with me because I swam...

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