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In Greek mythology the god Pan, protector of the woods and pastures and a seductive musician, was wildly unpredictable.
But Aug. 2 at the Atlanta Games, when a gold medal will be on the line as the U.S. synchronized swimming team does its Pan lift, the last thing the team wants is to be unpredictable.
The lift is a dramatic move midway through the crucial free routine. As the music they mixed and cut, Fantasia on the Orchestra, moves into the woodwind section and to Pan's flute-like notes, the swimmers gathered under water will lift Jill Sudduth out of the water and begin moving down the pool.
''It is the epitome of teamwork, one slip of a leg, one ill-timed move, and plop, she's in the pool,'' says co-coach Gail Emery. ''It's a lot like riding a surfboard, except that she has to shift her weight onto one leg and pivot and still remain graceful. Not too many surfers can do that.''
The team event is new. It replaces the solo and duet competition, which joined the Games in 1984.
Chris Carver, the team's other co-coach, says the lift is designed to float slowly down the pool, ''as if the wind was blowing it.''
In reality, it's being propelled by the eggbeater kick of the five-swimmer base, anchored by Becky Dyroen-Lancer, the team's strongest athlete, and Nathalie Schneyder, it's most muscular.
''Becky is the base of all our lifts, and she has a lot to do with their success,'' Carver says. ''Nathalie is our most-cut (defined) swimmer. We call her our Schwarzenegger.''
Says Emery: ''In a way, it's like football. If everyone does everything right, Jill looks like a great quarterback. And a lot of the success is due to the great offensive line working together on the bottom.''
The biggest trick, says Heather Pease, a member of that line, is to generate the force of an offensive guard without grunting, grimacing or showing discomfort.
''It's a lot like figure skating, we glide like they do and do a lot of similiar moves, except we hold our breath and they don't.''
The team also needs lineman-like strength without lineman-like bulk and the ability to work hard for up to two minutes without oxygen.
For that, strength trainer Donald Chu, president of the National Strength and Conditioning Association, designed a circuit training schedule that keeps the team working ''at an anaerobic threshold'' of 160-180 heartbeats a minute.
''We keep them working fast and hard,'' he says, ''because they have to have a well-developed vital capacity.''
For the actual muscle development, he concentrates on three areas: the rotator cuff muscle in the shoulder (''with the sculling movements, that's almost as important for them as it is for a baseball pitcher''); the abductor and adductor muscles in the upper leg for the eggbeater kick; and the trunk, which he considers most important.
''For the lifts and the moves they do, they need trunk control and stability, and for that, they need phenomenal musculature in that area.''
The way to get that is abdominal work, but not via a few situps or those gadgets sold on late-night cable TV.
''We have 100 to 110 different sets of abdominal exercises they do, 10 varieties of pushups, which they repeat between 60 to 100 times during a workout,'' he says. Plus, drills with 8- to 15-pound medicine balls.
Chu's program began with three-times-a-week sessions last October. The women have tapered to twice a week and will soon cut to once a week.
The goal, Chu says, was to build ''six packs,'' the seriously developed washboard abdominals of magazine cover fame, to serve as another kind of unheralded base.
''When they swim, you can't see all those muscles at work,'' he says. ''But every one of them is working.''
By Karen Allen, USA TODAY