Randal Bal after finishing fourth in the 100-meter backstroke at the 2008 Olympic trials (Jonathan Newton, The Washington Post)
Randal Bal can teach plenty about the sport of swimming, and even more about handling tough times. He will be trying to impart his experience on both fronts to the young swimmers he will meet Saturday at the Potomac Valley Swimming Swimposium. It wasn’t so long ago, Bal recalls, that he was one of the swimmers bobbing in the water, hoping to take something away from the swim star on the pool deck.
“I remember 10 years ago a guy by the name of [four-time Olympic medal winner] Tom Jager came in for a clinic,” Bal said. “I remember looking up at him and thinking, ‘This guy is so big and so strong. It would be fantastic to be in his shoes. Now, I’m in his shoes.”
And now that he’s in those shoes, he realizes it sure wasn’t easy getting there.
Bal, 28, once won 21 straight World Cup races in the backstroke. He has won seven world-championship medals (five in short-course, two in long-course) and owned two world records. He won the $100,000 top prize at the end of the 2007 FINA World Cup season in Europe.
But he also finished fourth at the 2004 and 2008 Olympic trials, just missing the Olympic team twice. He went water-skiing after the first disappointing trials, seeking to blow off steam, and sustained a shoulder injury that nearly ended his career.
Finally, at this year’s world championship trials, Bal got food poisoning the day of the men’s 100 back competition and had to drop out. The unexpected illness prevented him from qualifying for the U.S. squad that went to Rome.
“One thing the sport teaches us,” said Bal, who will conduct a swim clinic at Georgetown Prep with Olympians Kate Ziegler and Rowdy Gaines, “is what we’re physically and emotionally capable of.”
It was the first setback five years ago that taught Bal, who earned a psychology degree from Stanford, about what he could endure. He visited three surgeons after injuring his shoulder while goofing around on the water; all told him he needed what would likely be career-ending shoulder surgery. A fourth suggested a rehabilitation program. Bal chose option No. 4 and spent a nearly a year swimming with a masters team in California.
“I had a bunch of naysayers after that, even my own coach at Stanford,” Bal said. “I think of lot of people pretty much wrote me off.”
But Bal came blazing back the following year, swimming faster than everat the U.S. summer national championships. He could not believe he had improved after what had felt like such an amateur year of training. That experience caused him to change his approach to the sport, he said. He realized it was the personal strides that meant something to him; not the money or medals.
Though he failed to make the Olympic team in 2008 despite entering the U.S. trials with the highest seed in the 100 back, he said he wasn’t gravely disappointed; he knew he had put forth a great effort in a race in which Aaron Peirsol had lowered the world record.
“I wanted to put myself in a position where I could not fail,” Bal said. “I felt like I did that since 2005.”
Since his most recent setback at the U.S. championships in July, when he became so ill he vomited on deck, Bal has trained on his own in Sacramento. He might head back to Italy, his training home for a couple of years, but he doesn’t plan to compete in this season’s World Cup events despite his previous success.
He said he is deterred by the presence of high-tech suits, which won’t be banned until January, and the expense of competing. With the suits in the mix, Bal said, he isn’t sure he could win enough to cover the cost of the trip.
He is sure about one thing, however. He will seek a spot in the 2012 Summer Games.
“I don’t know when I’m going to wrap it up,” Bal said. “At this point, I’m committed until 2012.
“It would be great to make an Olympic team,” he said “I’ve come so close, I know it’s just within arm’s reach. I won’t kill myself if I don’t achieve it, but I’m pretty aggressive and competitive, going out for goals I set for myself.”
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