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Her former role as team baby and mascot has been taken over by this year's huggable 16-year-old, Nadia Anita Nall, a high school junior from suburban Baltimore. Nall's first name was bestowed in honor of Nadia Comaneci, who won Olympic gold as a gymnast in 1976 while Nall's father watched TV awaiting her birth. But the name was dropped from family usage in favor of Anita. So too, when she was seven, was her seemingly foreordained pursuit of gymnastics. She focused on swimming, set age-group records by 12 and notched an adult American record at 14.
Nall's mother joshes her about being a time-warp child of the '60s. She favors tie-dyed shirts and sandals, totes home crumpled paper to ensure that it is recycled, sleeps on a water bed and spurns red meat. Unlike Evans, however, Nall gave up college eligibility to turn pro. She took $30,000 in stipends from U.S. swimming officials, plus $10,000 for setting two world records at the team trials. That money is a trickle compared with what will come if she wins the 100-m and 200-m breaststroke and adds a gold in the medley relay.
The most drama is likely to come in the backstroke, pitting towering Wagstaff (5 ft. 11 in., with men's size 11 1/2 feet) against compact Krisztina Egerszegi (5 ft. 4 in.) of Hungary. Wagstaff fades at 200 m but is a front runner at 100 m, and the Barcelona race may be the first time a woman swims that distance in less than a minute.
Still, grand dame Evans, puppyish Nall and embattled Wagstaff are likely to be overshadowed by Thompson and Summer Sanders, each competing in as many as five events. Sanders, maybe the team's most complete swimmer, is in the 100-m and 200-m butterfly and the 200-m and 400-m individual medley, plus a possible relay. She is likely to win only twice -- teammate Crissy Ahmann-Leighton is the fastest active 100-m butterflyer in the world, and Sanders tends to lose rhythm in the final freestyle laps of the medleys -- yet she could be somewhere on the victory podium five times.
Thompson, who is so tough that she often wrestles male Olympic swimmer Doug Gjertsen to a standoff, is a favorite at all the freestyle distances Evans isn't swimming -- the 50 m, 100 m and 200 m -- and will likely join freestyle and medley relays. She could come close to the tally of her heroine, Kristin Otto of East Germany, whose six gold medals at Seoul are a record for a woman in any sport. Thompson's awe at that feat is tinged with healthy skepticism and a yen for battle. "To take over from the East Germans would be the ultimate revenge," she says. "To do, without drugs, what they did with drugs would be an unreal accomplishment."