Surf News

When Chris DeJong retires from swimming, he’s planning to jump right back into the water, surfboard in hand.

It’ll be off to Hawaii’s North Shore, the Fiji islands, the coasts of New Zealand.

“I want to go to all the exotic surfing locations I can afford,” DeJong said.

And when the surfing excursion concludes, DeJong may walk among the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, Peru, or stroll the streets of Europe.

“I want to do it all,” he added during a recent interview at the University of Michigan’s Canham Natatorium.

First things first, however.

Beginning Sunday, the U.S. Olympic swimming trials will start in Omaha, Neb., and DeJong will soon find out whether his life - which has essentially been narrowed to the

50-meter length of a pool for the past two years - will include an August trip to Beijing, China, the host city for this summer’s Olympics.

Like the difficult, six-day-a-week training regimen he has endured, the competition DeJong will face in Omaha is formidable. Although he was ranked No. 5 in the world last year in the 200-meter backstroke, he’s slotted fourth among the Americans, behind world record holder Ryan Lochte, Aaron Peirsol and Michael Phelps.

Despite the possibility that Phelps may not swim the 200 backstroke because preliminary races are scheduled on the same day as the 200 IM - one of four individual events in which he holds the world record - DeJong will still need a breakthrough race to finish among the top two, each of whom will earn an Olympic berth.