By Kari Lydersen

Doctor Ron

About the Author

Kari Lydersen, a 1997 journalism graduate of Northwestern University, writes for The Washington Post (Chicago bureau). She was the open water national champion in 1992 (25K) and 1994 (15K) as well a junior national record holder in the 1000 yard free.

"No one ever calls him Ron."

That's how Team Foxcatcher and Germantown Academy coach Dick Shoulberg introduced 31-year-old Olympian Ron Karnaugh to his swimmers when Karnaugh returned to train with the team in Fort Washington, Pa., last summer.

"He's Doctor Ron. He's a medical doctor."

Karnaugh's accomplishments in the pool are impressive enough—he is a four-time national champion, and by qualifying for the upcoming World Championships at summer nationals last July with a second-place finish in the 200 IM (2:02.88), he completed a resume that includes national team berths for almost every major international competition, starting with the Goodwill Games in Moscow in 1986.

But the water isn't the only place Karnaugh has excelled. Last May he graduated from the New Jersey Medical School in Newark with an M.D. in orthopedic surgery. Not only did he become the oldest male swimmer ever to make a national team this summer, but he did it after four years training around the infamous rigors of med school.

"I know people in med school who are dead just going to school, and they don't understand how he can possibly do it," said Karnaugh's girlfriend of four years, Tracy Beder. "His dedication to the sport is pretty incredible. He's extremely dedicated to everything he does, whether it's a major meet or taking his exams or helping his neighbor mow the lawn."

Knowing the Body

Though the countless hours spent in labs, hospital wards and hitting the books would seem to be a detriment to an athletic career, Karnaugh thinks med school actually helped his performance this year.

Whatever it was, you can't argue with the results. Karnaugh won two bronze medals at the short course World Championships in Sweden last April, breaking Eric Namesnik's 1993 American record in the 400 IM with a 4:12.53 and going 1:59.12 in the 200 IM. He also won a bronze in the 200 IM at the Pan Pacific Championships in Japan last August with a 2:02.25, his fastest time in five years. And he placed fifth at Pan Pacs in the 400 IM with a 4:22.69.

"I attribute much of my success to the knowledge I've gained from four years of med school," he said. "I've learned how the body works—nutrition, physiology, pharmokinetics—how you react to Advil or the hormones released by different foods."

Shoulberg also likes to use Karnaugh's med school experience as a way to psyche him up and help put things in perspective. Karnaugh said he was moping after the 400 IM at summer nationals in Nashville, having uncharacteristically gone slower in finals (4:23.40) than prelims (4:22.54) to place fifth, though both times broke his previous best time of 4:24.12.

"Shoulberg could sense I was a little down on myself," said Karnaugh. "He said, 'I don't want to hear it. If you're gonna do surgery on me some day and you're operating on my knee, I don't want you thinking about the hand from yesterday.' "

Return To Foxcatcher

Karnaugh said he credits Shoulberg with much of his success this summer. Karnaugh actually made his first national team while swimming for Shoulberg during the summer of 1986. He was going to LaSalle University in Philadelphia at the time, and after a summer with Team Foxcatcher, he made the Goodwill Games team by placing fourth in the 200 IM (2:03.78) at his first-ever nationals.

In 1987, he transferred to UC Berkeley, where he was an NCAA All-American under Coach Nort Thornton, but he kept in touch with Shoulberg for the next 10 years and says it was always in the back of his mind that he might return to Team Foxcatcher.

"When I left, the last thing Dick said was,'The door's always open,' " said Karnaugh, a Maplewood, N.J., native and 1984 graduate of Seton Hall Prep School. "Now, a mere 11 years later, I return to the coach who launched my career."

He said Shoulberg's unique IM-based, distance-based program has been integral to his success, as has Shoulberg's holistic approach to the sport.

"He cares about athletes as people," Karnaugh said. "He teaches you about life and how to keep it simple and realistic. At the same time he's very intense and a strict disciplinarian. He's like the Bela Karolyi of swimming."

Shoulberg did lay down the law when Karnaugh approached him last February about training with Team Foxcatcher, where over 40 athletes from ages 7 to 31 train at the same time in six lanes.

"I said, 'If you're willing to do the work, I think you're fast enough to make the World Championship team,' " Shoulberg said. " 'But, you better not come here out of shape, buddy.' "

Giving Back

Shoulberg also said Karnaugh's return was dependent upon him fitting in with the team chemistry and giving back to the program, a role Shoulberg said Karnaugh filled to a T.

"He contributed this summer beyond anyone's expectation," said Shoulberg, who has placed several swimmers on the U.S. Olympic team each quadrennium since 1984. "The older swimmer has a tremendous responsibility to give back to the team. He'd come in and see some ninth grade boy's backstroke turn wasn't that good, and he'd work on that turn with him till that boy's turn got 100 percent better."

Maddy Crippen, who qualified for Worlds with second-place finishes in the 200 and 400 IM at Nashville, agreed that training with Karnaugh has been an inspiration for everyone on the team.

"It's kinda cool to watch someone who's 31 swim like him," said Crippen, 17, who has been with Shoulberg since she was 8. "The fact that he's still going as fast as he was 10 years ago gives someone who's 17 the hope that they can still be going fast at 27. I really admire his perseverance."

Crippen said Karnaugh's age difference also makes for good teasing. "He'll make fun of our generation, the Gap Generation, saying, 'You guys are so crazy running out and getting tattoos and body piercing. We never did that.' And we tease him about his '80s music."

Stormy History

Though Karnaugh and Shoulberg said they have always been close friends, there are some who remember their relationship as more tumultuous. Part of the reason was the presence of Olympians David Berkoff and Dave Wharton on the team, making for an intensely competitive training atmosphere. Karnaugh said this did factor into his decision to go to Berkeley, where he graduated in 1989.

"Since we were such rivals over the years, it was a little too much to race each other on a daily basis," Karnaugh said of Wharton. "We were fighting for a spot on the Olympic team, and it wasn't in my best interest to train with him every day. He would learn my weaknesses, and the IM is a very strategic race."

Tragedy in '92

To those outside the swimming world, Karnaugh's name is probably best known because of the tragedy that befell him at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. After the opening ceremonies, while walking up the aisle at the stadium, Karnaugh's father, Peter, suffered a fatal heart attack. Karnaugh went on to place an impressive sixth in the 200 IM, although he was ranked first in the world at the time, and the Games were forever marred by the memory.

"It's something I'll never forget," said Karnaugh. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about it. For a year or two, it was really hard to cope with, thinking why me and why did this happen at the Olympics, which was supposed to be the best week of my life. But having gone through med school, I see how people live and die every day, and I feel really grateful for the time I had with him."

Karnaugh said it was his father's death, as well as his mother's laryngectomy because of cancer a year later, that convinced him to enter medicine. He also recalled a special moment as he walked in the Parade of Athletes at the '92 opening ceremonies.

"I saw my father halfway through the march yelling my name and waving and crying," said Karnaugh. "In a stadium with millions of people, what are the odds of that? It was kind of eerie. It's almost like that's the way God wanted it to be."

Karnaugh was met with a national outpouring of sympathy after his father's death, including then-Olympic Committee vice president and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's offer to pay for his med school education.

"George really has supported Ron," said Beder, who met Karnaugh when he came to sign autographs at the pool where she worked in Maplewood in 1992. "It's not just handing the money over. He's really been there as a friend."

Harsh Economics

Steinbrenner's financial support partially helped Karnaugh overcome one of the major hurdles that face older swimmers: the need for money. With USS support reserved for an elite few—Karnaugh didn't get any USS money until he qualified for Worlds—and sponsorship deals relatively hard to come by, Shoulberg said it is the struggle to put food on the table that interferes with the continuance of many swimmers' careers.

"The problem is economics," Shoulberg said. "If there was a way to support these athletes in their mid-20s so they didn't have to worry about lunch and dinner and paying the rent, we'd have a lot more of them going fast."

The Future

Having just finished an intense three-week surgery internship requirement in September, Karnaugh is now putting his medical career on the back burner in order to prepare for 2000. He took a year off from med school to train for the '96 trials, but he said it wasn't enough because it took him eight months just to get back in shape.

For the previous three years, he had been training for just an hour three or four times a week between classes and labs. He still placed fourth in '96, giving him hope that with three years of solid training, he can be in top form by 2000.

Having maintained the fitness he gained in '96 over this past year with 2-3-hour workouts on his own every day, he will now start training about 80,000 yards a week in 10 sessions and doing over an hour of dryland every day. He will live with a family near Germantown, which is about an hour-and-a-half drive from his hometown of Maplewood.

"Now no more (operating on) hips, no more legs," Shoulberg said he told Karnaugh about training. "You have the rest of your life to do that. Now we get ready for Perth."

The Iron Horse Of Swimming

Karnaugh says his ultimate goal is to be the Roger Bannister or Cal Ripken of swimming. Ripken is a model of longetivity in sports, recently breaking "iron horse of baseball" Lou Gehrig's record of most consecutive games played. Bannister, also an M.D., was the first man to break the 4-minute mile in track, an accomplishment Karnaugh likens to his hope to break the 2-minute 200 IM.

Wharton holds the American record at 2:00.11, and Karnaugh's best is a 2:00.92 from the 1991 Pan-American Games. "I went 2:02.25 this summer on eight weeks of training, so I think with an additional three years to prepare, I can find that two-second drop," he said.

After 2000, Karnaugh will do his residency, which means 110-hour work weeks. But in the meantime, he will be no slouch out of the water either. He plans to get a Masters or Ph.D. in biomechanical engineering or molecular biology, as well as publish in medical journals.

"I don't want my brain to go stale," he said.

Having published abstracts of works with names like "The Effects of Ultrasound on Strength, Quality, Size and Mast Cell Degranulation in Matched Pairs of Surgically Induced Lesions in Mini Yucatan Pigs," that probably isn't a danger.