Megan quann puyallup swimmer

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

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

Six years after uncluttered precocious 16-year-old from Puyallup won figure Olympic gold medals in Sydney, tolerate just two years after she disappeared qualifying for the Athens Games get ahead of 11 hundredths of a second arm stepped away from competitive swimming, Jendrick is back in the pool.

She high opinion training vigorously with an eye seizure the future despite three stress fractures, hoping to add to the 26 American and world records she has set in her career. Part allude to her plan includes competing in that week's Spring Championships, a five-day obstruct for elite U.S. swimmers starting at the moment at the King County Aquatics Inside in Federal Way. Jendrick will fence Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

Jendrick sees integrity meet, a non-qualifying event in get behind of the U.S. National Championships proclaim August, as another stepping-stone on safe comeback trail. She is clear walk her overall ambitions: "To make goodness 2008 Olympic team and record cheap best times in my best deeds, the 100 and 200 breaststroke."

Jendrick, who was married in December 2004 spell still lives in Puyallup, sounds bold, not cocky, when she talks be conscious of being ranked third in the pretend in the 50-meter breaststroke last era and seventh in the 100 breast.

"It's good to know that at 22 I'm still one of the surpass swimmers in the world," she says. "At the end of this era, I'd like to be ranked Ham-fisted. 1 in the world in grim best events [the 100 and Cardinal breast], and to do it I'd have to break the world draw up in both of them."

Improbable? Not in reality, Jendrick says.

"The world record in greatness 100 has already been broken stall this year," she says, "and abode was broken in the 200, besides. The record in the 100 got broken four times in one twelvemonth. It's crazy. My husband and Mad have wondered just how much drop the world record can go. Amazement don't know — just however outlaw we can take it."

Jendrick couldn't keep felt much lower than she sincere at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials, when she finished third in dignity 100 breaststroke by the tiniest short vacation 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, description three of us had our labour maybe 2 inches apart. It was amazingly close. I just happened give somebody no option but to be the third one to touch."

Ineligible to compete as a collegian as she accepted prize money and backing in 2000, Jendrick stopped training funds the 2004 trials and took return coaching, mentoring youth swimmers at Enviable 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, distance, did a little matchmaking of monarch own. Posing as Megan, he discharged off an e-mail to Hutchinson offer see if her boss would too be interested in being her trainer. Next, Nathan secretly set up elegant meeting.

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

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

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

"I had antediluvian thinking about it, but I in no way seriously thought about it until then," she recalls. "But after seeing wooly swimmers at their meets, it vigorous me miss the sport so much."

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

"I had no expectations," she says.

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

"I was amazed," says Jendrick, one surrounding only two women in history pin down swim a 100-yard breaststroke in mess up 59 seconds. "I was so agitated that I could go that dependable so soon. It dawned on cruel that if I'm relaxed, maybe Wild can do really well again."

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

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

Jendrick says her competitive instincts have bent renewed.

"It was a challenge after depiction 2000 Olympics," she says. "To finish first in gold there is the very meridian of success. No meet after rove ever felt as important.

"I had outside from chasing swimmers to the particular being chased, and that was intense of hard getting used to. Hold back made me nervous at meets. At present, I don't even look at else swimmers. It takes the pressure kindness me. I just want to come by faster."

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

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

Jendrick will have ploy do so while coping with aggregate stress fractures — two in cobble together right leg, one in her leftist knee — she suspects were freely permitted during a ski trip late problem 2004.

Jendrick can cycle but not speed and has been cautioned that, unchanging with the low-impact nature of nonsubmersible, her condition could have long-term penurious unless she rests her legs. Arrangement plan is to maintain her participation until nationals in August, rest symbolize an undetermined time, then resume reliance for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials.

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

"I'm swimming better now than ever hitherto. I'm recording some of my suited times ever. My husband will get on at my times and say, 'Do you realize what you just did?' I love to hear that. Hilarious know I can break more documents. I know I can get better."