Evans

Janet Evans, pictured, is an animal - and I mean this as the highest complement. She lit the world up with her distance freestyles : her 800 meter crawl went unmatched for 19-years before Becky Aldington took the World Record in Beijing. Evans a diminutive 5-foot, six inches, and 119 lbs in an era where elite swimmers grow bigger and taller. But, boy, does she motor : her speedy turnover goes on and on and on. Evans, who set WR in the 400, 800 and 1500 at the '88 Olympics , nick-named "Miss Perpetual Motion." Now, at 41, she is making a comeback and will compete at the US Olympic Trials in Omaha, Nebraska later this month.

The other day I meet a Brit, Ed, who came across Evans at a USC party, where Evans a student-athlete in the '80s (she also attended Stanford for a while). Evans is pretty cute and, according to Ed, chatty and friendly. They hit it off, and she asked him point blank : "Do you want to shag ?" Not looking a gift-horse in the mouth, Ed leaves the party and ... ends up line-dancing until 4AM. He wonders, still, today: what the fuck was that all about ? (A Google search indicates that a shag dance is swing dance that originated in the 1920s). Poor bastard, he still hates America.

At the end of her first career, Evans held seven world records, five Olympic medals (including four gold), and 45 U.S. national titles — third only to Tracy Caulkins and Michael Phelps. Photo from the web.