RIGHT ON TARGET? : Louganis, Who Placed 4th Recently, Says He Is No Shoo-In for Olympics

Greg Louganis is approaching the Phillips 66/U.S. Diving Outdoor Championships at Irvine this week with 2 Olympic gold medals, 5 world titles and 44 national titles to his credit. Is there any question who will dominate the men’s competition? Will the judges take their places with any question in their minds?

Yes, Louganis insists, there is always that one big question.

Leaning forward, pausing for effect and acting every bit the UC Irvine drama school graduate, Louganis looks from face to face and asks in a stage whisper: “But can he still do it?”

The question was raised when he finished fourth on the 10-meter platform in a meet at Annapolis, Md., last month. The explanation is that he had taken some time off to give his wrist a chance to heal. But the painful bone chips in his left wrist also raise the question.

Can he do it with a bad wrist? Won’t the pain of impact distract from the concentration needed to compete at this level?

And because this meet is the last major test before the Olympic trials, this meet will go a long way in telling whether he will be able to do it there. Will he qualify to compete in his third Olympic Games?

Louganis has to be considered the favorite any time he climbs the ladder to a diving board. But, according to Louganis, he does not consider himself a lock to win this weekend or to make the Olympic team.

“There are no guarantees for anyone,” Louganis said. “Anything can happen. I’ve seen it happen to others who were supposed to be shoo-ins. . . . I think I have to prepare myself for the worst and the best that can possibly happen.”

He said that although the fourth-place finish in Annapolis was affected by a brief layoff, the three divers who finished ahead of him earned their finishes. It was no fluke.

“I can’t take anything away from the performance of Matt Scoggin, who was superb, or Mike Wantuck, who was consistent in both preliminaries and finals, or Scott Donie, who did a really nice job,” Louganis said. “They deserve the credit.

“I just looked at it as a kick in the pants to say, ‘Let’s get training.’ ”

It’s not that Louganis’ performance is slipping. “It’s closer now because the whole world is getting better,” he said. “They’re not standing still. That’s why I have to improve.”

In the four years since winning the gold on both the platform and the 3-meter springboard at the ’84 Olympics, Louganis has been working to perfect the same 10 dives.

While others have added dives with higher degrees of difficulty, Louganis has stuck with the same list. Absolutely the same program. Which indicates how far ahead he was in 1984. There wasn’t much he could add.

“But you can always improve,” he said. “Spin faster, finish higher, get into the water cleaner. I’ve been working a lot on my entries.”

Not an easy thing to do while breaking the water with a wrist that hurts every time. Still, Louganis says he is not going to allow the wrist to interrupt his training.

“It can’t. I don’t have time. At this point, it’s dive with pain or don’t dive,” he said.

So he’ll dive with pain. But, he says, divers get used to pain. He has had to compete with a dislocated shoulder. He was a gymnast and a dancer when he was very young, and he learned early that gymnasts and dancers perform with sprained ankles and shin splints and all manners of hurt. The show must go on.

Louganis describes the pain as “not too bad, kind of a constant throb on the 1-meter and 3-meter.” But when he smacks into the water from the platform, that’s different. “After a couple of dives off the platform, I’m in excruciating pain until the endorphines kick in. Then it’s tolerable. Once I’m in competition, I’m not thinking about the wrist.”

The wrist has been bothering him for about three months, hindering him more by taking away training time than hindering his actual performances. Surgery might help, but he couldn’t recover in time for the Olympics.

He needs meets such as this one at the Heritage Park Aquatic Complex to get sharp. The meet starts today with preliminary competition and continues through Sunday, when both the women’s and men’s platform finals will be held.

Louganis will be defending his title on the 10-meter platform. Mark Bradshaw of Columbus, Ohio, is defending his 1-meter title and Ron Meyer, 25, is defending his 3-meter title. The challengers will include Matt Scoggin, the 1987 U.S. platform champion and Bruce Kimball, the 1984 platform silver medalist.

Wendy Williams of Miami is the women’s defending champion on the platform. She’ll be challenged by Michele Mitchell of Boca Raton, Fla., the silver medalist in the 1984 Olympics, and Wendy Wyland, a graduate of Mission Viejo High School and a former USC diver who won the bronze medal in 1984.

The top springboard competitors will include Mary Fischbach, Tristan Baker-Schultz and Megan Neyer. Kelly McCormick, the 1984 silver medalist on springboard and an eight-time U.S. champion, will not compete this week so that she can rest an injured calf muscle and be ready to go at the Olympic trials, which are Aug. 17-21 at Indianapolis.

This meet will determine the U.S. national team that will compete in Europe and Australia this winter. The top eight scorers in the 3-meter and platform finals will make the national team.

Louganis is not making plans for traveling with the national team next winter. He’s planning to take some time, maybe a couple of years, to develop his acting career, which has been pretty much on hold. But that does not mean that after the Olympics in Seoul, his diving days are over.

“I am not announcing my retirement,” Louganis said, adding later, with a little laugh, that it wouldn’t make much difference anyway considering he announced his retirement in 1984. “I am pretty maxed out, and I need some time off. But I don’t know when I’ll be ready to retire.”

He does seem to be intrigued by the possibility of making a comeback for the 1992 Olympic Games, when there will be competition on the 1-meter springboard. It would be nice to have gold medals in all three events. “That’s a possibility,” he said.