Catch those Stars and Stripes fluttering through the crowd. Listen for the splash. Blink into the sun and -- whoops! In 22 seconds the race is over. But when the bubbles clear, it is not The Star Spangled Banner playing over the Bernat Picornell Pool but the strains of another anthem. And the man who lays claim to being the new Johnny Weissmuller, the new Mark Spitz, the new Matt Biondi, is a fellow from Volgograd named Popov, winner of the 50-m free and the fastest swimmer of the XXVth Olympiad.
In the dizzying array of backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle -- 62 Olympic races in all -- the long-dominant Americans especially expected to excel in the individual free sprints, the glamour events, as if they were a birthright. The favorite: Biondi, the 1988 five-gold champion who earns six figures posing for Ray Ban sunglasses and drinking Evian water. And should the California torpedo fail, there would be ample backup on the U.S. team, including Tom Jager, the 1988 silver medalist who earns a living swimming against Biondi in exhibition races. Los tiburones yanqui -- the Yankee sharks -- the Spanish sportswriters dubbed them.
But as the strains of the Russian anthem faded, veterans Biondi with a silver medal and Jager with a bronze found themselves looking up at the 6-ft. 6-in., 192-lb. frame of Alexander Popov, a fresh-faced 20-year-old who was virtually unknown in swimming circles until last year. Popov's gold in the 50- m race followed his victory two days earlier in the 100-m freestyle, where Biondi holds the world record. At the postrace press conference, Popov was asked how it was possible to succeed amid the chaos of the former Soviet ( Union. "We were preparing in the worst conditions ever," agreed the curly- locked machinist's son. "But that did not do us any harm. On the contrary, it made us more aggressive." With a flash of bravado, he added, "If the American team wants to win more medals, we say to them, 'Come and train in Russia!' "
With the cold war allegedly over, U.S. Olympic officials tried to be magnanimous, all the while pointing out that the Unified Team, led by their forceful trainer Gennadi Turetsky, had profited handsomely from a wealth of new data published by American sports institutions. "Our team is doing as well as expected," said the U.S. head coach, Dennis Pursley. "But the days when one nation can dominate the world of swimming are past." Still, with 11 of 31 gold medals, the U.S. firmly outdistanced its closest competitors. The Unified Team captured six, Hungary five and China four. The conspicuous loser was united Germany, with only one gold. In 1988 the steroid-dependent East German women had sacked 10 golds, but that was before new doping controls.