''It was nice and cute,''said Thompson, who won more Olympic medals than any American woman. ''But I want to get dizzy after too many laps.''
She had quit swimming two years earlier, because, after many years, the love of her life became a burden. Although she won her 10th medal of the Olympics in Sydney, its main emotion is a mixture of relief that her career is ending and disappointment that she never won the individual gold medal. Her eight gold medals won in relays.
Now she returns. At age 31, Thompson will swim at the trials of the United States, which begins today in Long Beach, California, in an attempt to make her fourth Olympic team. It will attempt to qualify for the freestyle 50-m, 100 free and 100 butterfly - and seeded first in the 50 freestyle.