Byline: Gwen Knapp San Francisco Examiner Scripps Howard News Service
CLOVIS, Calif. -- The meet announcer keeps calling out names such as Brooke, Courtney, Ashley, Jason and Kyle. In the final of the men's 200-meter individual medley, the competitors include a Beau, a Ryan and a Joey.
In the middle of it all, the announcer occasionally adds a little extra pomp to his voice and introduces ``Dr. Ron Karnaugh.''
Last week, for the medley, a 32-year-old stepped onto the starting block in Lane 3. He looked bigger and buffer than the young striplings around him.
Dr. Ron, as he is known to readers of his advice column in Swimming World magazine, seemed out of place. But then he swam and proved once again he still belonged. He finished second in the national championship race, in a time of 2 minutes, 2.16 seconds.
``There's no reason to believe that a swimmer can't keep achieving at my age,'' he said. ``You see it in every other sport. Look at Michael Jordan and Mark McGwire. They're both well into their 30s, and they're proving that you can keep improving. I'm proving it now.''
The difference is that while Jordan took time off to play baseball and McGwire lost games to back spasms and bad feet, Karnaugh barely interrupted his swimming career to get a medical degree.
He plans to become an orthopedic surgeon, a specialty that requires a yearlong internship and four years of residency. He could go into general medicine and cut the residency to two years, but that would be uncharacteristic. Given a choice between an elevator or several flights of stairs, Karnaugh will start climbing.
He likes to think of himself as the Cal Ripken Jr. of swimming, but the analogy doesn't fit exactly. For one thing, Ripken isn't likely ever to perform surgery. For another, he plays for the Baltimore Orioles. Karnaugh is an absolute New York Yankees fan. He rooted for them as a child in New Jersey, and as a medical student he rooted for them from the owner's box.
George Steinbrenner appointed himself Karnaugh's benefactor at the 1992 Olympics, when Karnaugh's father, Peter, died of a heart attack at the Opening Ceremonies. The 61-year-old truck driver had just snapped a picture of his son on the stadium floor, waving a hat in his dad's direction.
The swimmer didn't know what had happened until hours later, when his mother, sister and Steinbrenner arrived at his room in the Olympic Village at about 3 a.m. Steinbrenner, on the board of the U.S. Olympic Committee, had helped the two past security obstacles so Ron could hear the news from family, not reporters. On the spot, the Yankees owner vowed to put the swimmer through the New Jersey School of Medicine, at a cost of more than $50,000.
``He didn't do it for publicity,'' Karnaugh said. ``His agent wasn't there. It was just him in the middle of the night.''
Karnaugh finished medical school in May 1997. He has stayed in touch with Steinbrenner. At the Goodwill Games, he called in a request for 50 Yankees caps to distribute to fellow swimmers.
``The next day, he overnighted 100,'' Karnaugh said.
Karnaugh, a 1989 Cal graduate, already had been accepted to medical school when his father died, fulfilling one of Peter Karnaugh's paternal dreams. But another family goal, sharing an Olympic medal, remains only half realized.
Karnaugh believes his father died at one of the happiest moments of his life. That brings him some peace, but Barcelona remains a painful memory. He swam the 200 IM six days after his father's death and, sleepy and dazed, took sixth place.
He hopes to make up for that in Sydney in the 2000 Olympics, when he would be 34, with a chance to become the oldest U.S. swimming medalist.
``That's also a reason why I'm still competing,'' he said. ``I dreamed all my life about going to the Olympics and winning the gold medal, and that didn't happen, with the passing of my father. I was the tragedy of the 1992 Games. . . . Whenever I think of myself as an Olympian, it brings up memories I'd like to be able to bury. I enjoyed the experience of the Olympic Games, but at the same time, I want to close that chapter.''
He didn't make the 1996 team, finishing fourth in the 200 IM at the Olympic Trials. He was designated an alternate. He was 30 years old and uncertain whether he would swim again.
A few weeks before the Olympics, Greg Burgess, who had qualified to represent the United States in the 200 IM, was caught drinking on a Florida beach with underage swimmers, technically in violation of the Olympic code of conduct. The code had been established to prevent repeats of the figure skating debacle in 1994, when Tonya Harding represented the U.S. despite her involvement in the plot to disable teammate Nancy Kerrigan.
Karnaugh promptly asked swimming and Olympic officials to consider kicking Burgess off the team, a request that troubled some of the other Olympians. Burgess went to Atlanta.
Would other swimmers have done the same thing? It's hard to say, but most of them aren't like Karnaugh, swimming at 32, achieving career bests while working on a postdoctoral fellowship at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. He has an intensity that stands apart.
