SwimmingWorldMagazine.com Rewind: 1985 U.S. Short Course Championships

PHOENIX, Arizona, October 20. REWIND continues its walk down memory lane with a look back at the 1985 U.S. Short Course National Championships.

After a Communist Bloc boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympiad, the 1985 edition of the Short Course Championships featured the U.S. gearing up for a non-boycott showdown at the 1986 World Championships.

Here is an excerpt of the story co-written by Russ Ewald and Karen Crouse in the May issue of Swimming World Magazine that year.

MONTEREY PARK, Calif. – Nine months after the Olympic Games, the nation's top swimmers returned to Los Angeles for the 1985 Phillips 66/U.S. Swimming Short Course National Championships at East Los Angeles College.

Instead of competing in the modern pool at the University of Southern California in downtown Los Angeles with thousands of fans watching, the elite of U.S. swimming performed several miles east in an L.A. suburb's junior college pool before a few hundred spectators.

Gone was the pageantry and colorful banners, the worldwide attention, the massive media coverage.

The swimmers were starting over. Ahead is the World Championships next year in Madrid and the opportunity to finally face the Communist Bloc countries that boycotted the 1984 Games. And further in the future is the 1988 Games in Seoul, Korea.

For the complete Swimming World Magazine article on the 1985 Short Course Championships, click here.

Premium online subscribers can view the entire 1985 May edition of the magazine, as well as any other edition of the magazine back to 1960. To order a premium subscription, please click here.

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