Casual Champ

Ray Cone was not trying to turn his daughter into an athlete. Cone, a safety director for a Teterboro, N.J. factory, taught six year-old Carin to swim for a perfectly prosaic reason: he did not want to worry when the family went holidaying on the Jersey shore. But Ray Cone knew an athlete when he saw one. Little Carin took to the water so naturally that he sent her to a swimming coach to find out how good she really was. Today, at 16, Carin is good enough to hold all four American women's backstroke titles (100 and 200 yds., 100 and 200 meters). Last week, in the National A.A.U.'s women's championships at Tyler, Texas, Carin pinwheeled up the Olympic (50-meter) course to a new record of 2:43.8 in the 200-meter backstroke. Next night she lowered the American 100 meter backstroke mark to 1:14.5.

The transition from carefree vacationer to record-breaking competitor was no romp in the surf. Ever since Carin decided to become a champion she has submitted to an endless grind. In the winter she works out five days a week in the Y.M.-Y.W.C.A. pool near her Ridgewood home. Once a week she travels to Manhattan for professional training at the Women's Swimming Association. When the weather warms up, she spends every day at Ridgewood's outdoor municipal pool, swims a mile morning and evening when the pool is uncrowded. "Afternoons," says Carin, "I put on my plaid bathing suit and go down with the kids and have a good time." There, she is always careful not to outdo her male friends.

Understandably, the routine is sometimes wearing. "In the dead season between the Nationals," says Carin, "that's when it gets discouraging. I say to myself, 'If you don't want to do more than half, you can stop.' But when I get halfway, I say, 'There, you've done that much; now you can do the rest of it.' "

After Carin did "all of it," last week in the 200-meter race, she joined the other girls in the coffee shop at Tyler's Blackstone Hotel. Between events, blonde, blue-eyed Carin was just another casual, crop-haired, broad-shouldered, high-school girl--as cool and pretty as peach ice cream, and bouncingly healthy. But like the others who had also set their share of records (the Walter Reed Swim Club's Shelley Mann set new world marks of 1:11.8 in the 100 meter butterfly, 2:44.4 in the 200-meter butterfly, and 5:52.5 in the 400-meter medley), Carin knew that her toughest races were still to come. All are pointing for next month's Olympic trials in Detroit. There the winners will be paid off with a plane trip to Melbourne.

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