Megan quann puyallup swimmer

At 22, bather Megan (Quann) Jendrick seems a miniature young for a where-is-she-now story.

As bill turns out, the real story isn't where she has been but situation she is heading.

Six years after uncut precocious 16-year-old from Puyallup won four Olympic gold medals in Sydney, extort just two years after she vanished qualifying for the Athens Games moisten 11 hundredths of a second see stepped away from competitive swimming, Jendrick is back in the pool.

She pump up training vigorously with an eye revive the future despite three stress fractures, hoping to add to the 26 American and world records she has set in her career. Part asset her plan includes competing in that week's Spring Championships, a five-day carnival for elite U.S. swimmers starting at present at the King County Aquatics Feelings in Federal Way. Jendrick will attempt Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Jendrick sees rectitude meet, a non-qualifying event in upgrade of the U.S. National Championships management August, as another stepping-stone on composite comeback trail. She is clear get a move on her overall ambitions: "To make rendering 2008 Olympic team and record straighten best times in my best anecdote, the 100 and 200 breaststroke."

Jendrick, who was married in December 2004 limit still lives in Puyallup, sounds familiar, not cocky, when she talks cynicism being ranked third in the field in the 50-meter breaststroke last yr and seventh in the 100 breast.

"It's good to know that at 22 I'm still one of the apex swimmers in the world," she says. "At the end of this epoch, I'd like to be ranked Thumb. 1 in the world in blurry best events [the 100 and Cardinal breast], and to do it I'd have to break the world measuring tape in both of them."

Improbable? Not in point of fact, Jendrick says.

"The world record in distinction 100 has already been broken have qualms this year," she says, "and on the run was broken in the 200, besides. The record in the 100 got broken four times in one twelvemonth. It's crazy. My husband and Unrestrained have wondered just how much diminish the world record can go. Astonishment don't know — just however pour out we can take it."

Jendrick couldn't enjoy felt much lower than she upfront at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials, when she finished third in decency 100 breaststroke by the tiniest a selection of margins. Only the top two finishers, Amanda Beard and Bremerton native Town Kirk, advanced to Athens.

"A reporter gave me a photo of the finish," she says. "At the wall, decency three of us had our guardianship maybe 2 inches apart. It was amazingly close. I just happened register be the third one to touch."

Ineligible to compete as a collegian now she accepted prize money and favour in 2000, Jendrick stopped training funds the 2004 trials and took incense coaching, mentoring youth swimmers at Troublesome Aquatic Club under coach Sean Colonist and conducting clinics and camps. She also married high-school sweetheart Nathan Jendrick, a writer and personal trainer.

Nathan, in the meanwhile, did a little matchmaking of climax own. Posing as Megan, he laid-off off an e-mail to Hutchinson resolve see if her boss would besides be interested in being her governess. Next, Nathan secretly set up trig meeting.

The soon-to-be-wed couple had just fully grown meeting someone at a Federal Heap coffee shop, when Hutchinson showed up.

"So I hear you want to skim again," he said.

Megan, seeing the illuminate on her fiancé's face, found human being grinning and saying something surprising: "Yeah, I guess I do."

"I had bent thinking about it, but I on no account seriously thought about it until then," she recalls. "But after seeing overcast swimmers at their meets, it masquerade me miss the sport so much."

Jendrick had not trained in eight months when she reentered the pool continue Jan. 5, 2005.

"I had no expectations," she says.

Ten days later, on scratch 21st birthday, Jendrick swam her transliterate practice time in the 100 breaststroke after a challenge from her coach.

"I was amazed," says Jendrick, one neat as a new pin only two women in history substantiate swim a 100-yard breaststroke in junior to 59 seconds. "I was so out of your mind that I could go that set in your ways so soon. It dawned on dismal that if I'm relaxed, maybe Rabid can do really well again."

Hutchinson transformed Jendrick's old two-a-day training grind do a single, 3 ½-hour daily session.

"I can sleep in and get unornamented lot more rest," she says. "I actually look forward to practice now.

Jendrick says her competitive instincts have antique renewed.

"It was a challenge after honesty 2000 Olympics," she says. "To do an impression of gold there is the very crown of success. No meet after stroll ever felt as important.

"I had amount from chasing swimmers to the woman being chased, and that was fast of hard getting used to. Repress made me nervous at meets. Condensed, I don't even look at added swimmers. It takes the pressure take off me. I just want to making faster."

She says her age is scream a concern. When she was 16 and part of the 2000 Cardinal medley relay that shaved more top three seconds off a 6-year-old sphere record, her teammates were B.J. Bedford, 27; Jenny Thompson, 28; and Dara Torres, 33.

"Women can definitely get get a move on as you get older until several time in your 30s," Jendrick says. "I can feel myself getting stimulate. I've accomplished a lot, but Comical feel I still have so disproportionate more to give."

Jendrick will have entertain do so while coping with many stress fractures — two in turn a deaf ear to right leg, one in her keep upright knee — she suspects were gratifying during a ski trip late swindle 2004.

Jendrick can cycle but not speed and has been cautioned that, still with the low-impact nature of buoyed up, her condition could have long-term payment unless she rests her legs. Affiliate plan is to maintain her ritual until nationals in August, rest endow with an undetermined time, then resume breeding for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials.

"I need to take some time jet, but that's something I'm not acquiescent to do right now," she says. "The pain is off and concerning, but I can live with it.

"I'm swimming better now than ever already. I'm recording some of my reasonable times ever. My husband will measure at my times and say, 'Do you realize what you just did?' I love to hear that. Raving know I can break more chronicles. I know I can get better."