Daily Mail: Janet Evans was perfectly content to walk away from swimming after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She had her gold medals, her world records. She was burned out and ready to move on.Evans morphed easily from athlete to spokeswoman. She got married and had two kids. By all accounts, the life she's built over the last 15 years is full and rewarding. Still, something kept nagging at her. She couldn't escape the tug of the pool. So, she's coming back.
The 39-year-old Evans has been training hard for the past six months with an eye on qualifying for next year's Olympic trials and, if all goes according to plan, earning a spot on the U.S. team for the London Games. She'll swim in her first meet since the Atlanta Olympics this weekend in her hometown of Fullerton, California.
She said: 'I have to believe it's realistic. I probably couldn't get through the workouts if I didn't. I'm sure there are going to be naysayers out there. That's OK. I certainly know how I feel when I'm in the water. I know what I'm capable of. You can never count me out.'
Evans might just be in the best shape of her life. In Atlanta, she weighed about 130 pounds. These days, she checks in at 112. Of course, there's nothing she can do about that date on the birth certificate. She'll turn 40 in August, and the body tends to break down a lot easier at this age than it does in the 20s.
So far, so good. There have been none of those nagging little injuries – though Evans always knocks on wood when she mentions this – and she's ready to start taking on some races. She'll swim at least two or three Masters meets to assess where she is, and there's a chance she'll enter the U.S. national championships in August. By early next year, she hopes to be back competing on the Grand Prix circuit, putting up times that show she'll be a serious contender at the Olympic trials.
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