August 4, 2000

Kris Wiebeck is used to being one of the youngest swimmers competing at national meets. The Jesuit High (Tampa, Fla.) senior-to-be started swimming when he was 5 years old and was one of the more youthful competitors at the junior nationals when he was 13.

	Kris Weibeck hopes to represent the U.S. in Sydney.

A year-and-a-half later, he was one of the youngest to compete at the senior nationals. Now, at age 17, Wiebeck will be one of the youngest swimmers at the U.S. Olympic Trials, starting Aug. 9 in Indianapolis, Ind.

Wiebeck qualified for the 200-meter backstroke, in which his best time is 2:05.5.

"The backstroke's been my best for the last four or five years," says Wiebeck, who failed to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the 200 freestyle and 100 backstroke. "The 200 is longer and it requires less of the strength that a lot of the guys in college and that graduated college have. It requires more stamina."

"I happen to think that he's more a freestyler than a backstroker," says Wiebeck's coach, former Olympian Mitzi Kremer. "But because he's had success in the backstroke so young, he's made the backstroke his specialty."

Kremer sees a lot of similarities between Wiebeck at 17 and herself when she was that age.

"I had the opportunity to go to three Trials, and my first one was when I was 16," says Kremer, an All-American at Clemson University (N.C.) in the late '80s. "In Kris, I see a lot of the way I was when I went for the first time. I'd been to nationals two years and he's been to nationals two years, and you think it's just going to be another national meet. And you get there."

Wiebeck knows that his past experiences can take him only so far. Therefore, the teen says he plans to keep things in perspective when he arrives in Indianapolis.

"The first time I was at seniors it was neat because it was only two years after the Atlanta Olympics," says Wiebeck, who owns a 4.27 GPA and hopes to attend Princeton, Stanford or Florida. "I competed in the meet, at the same time looking at all the Olympians. And now to be in there, I know I have to go out and beat these guys."

Even if Wiebeck earns the right to compete in Sydney, he says he'll again join his Jesuit teammates at the end of the prep season.

"Even if I made the Olympic team, I'd go back and swim," says Wiebeck, a state champion in the 100 backstroke last year. "I have friends at school who are on the high school baseball team and the football team and to them, high school football and baseball is a big deal. High school swimming should be a big deal, too."

But make no mistake, the biggest chlorine-filled "deal" will be the one in Australia in less than two months.

"It would be awesome," says Wiebeck of making the U.S. squad. "It would be the opportunity of a lifetime to go and really represent our country."