LIKE GOLD IN THE BANK MANY HAVE VESTED INTEREST ALREADY IN KRAYZELBURG.

Byline: Karen Crouse

The corporate suits love Lenny Krayzelburg's story.

It's a magical tale, though with no muggles, mind you, or whomping willows. As a kid, he escaped the Dark Side - in this case, the Soviet Union before the Cold War was in full thaw - with his parents and younger sister and settled in West Hollywood and then Studio City.

Swimming was his means of assimilation. Like Harry Potter, he exhibited special powers, in the backstroke, and was carried by an incantational current from Fairfax High to Santa Monica College to USC.

Last summer, he swam as if under the spell of some magical powder, setting world records in the 100- and 200-meter backstrokes at the same pool in Sydney where the 2000 Olympics will be next month.

Lenny Krayzelburg and the Sorcerer's Sponsors? The corporate suits in the boardrooms up and down Madison Avenue were smitten.

Seven companies have signed Krayzelburg to guaranteed contracts, including Kellogg's, which will unveil boxes of Crispix cereal with the 6-foot-2 swimmer gracing the front this month.

Since last summer Krayzelburg has collected what amounts to a hefty advance for the next chapter of his story.

The buzz is that it's going to move people to tears and cheers. The wave of expectation appears nowhere close to cresting. Krayzelburg hasn't qualified for the U.S. team yet and already some people have pegged him the Mary Lou Retton of the millennium Games.

Krayzelburg, who will compete this week at the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials in Indianapolis, is under the starter's gun, begging the question: Can he deliver as advertised, or will he succumb to wizard's block?

``It's a good question,'' Krayzelburg said the other day, leaning back on the bleachers at the USC Olympic Swim Stadium after a two-hour practice. ``It's really scary to think if I don't do well, what do you say to all the people you'll feel like you've let down?''

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Krayzelburg, 24, never envisioned his story taking this latest twist.

Really, it would have required an imagination more more vivid than J.K. Rowling's to picture a child born into Communism growing up to become a polished jewel of capitalism.

It certainly didn't seem possible that swimming would set his family free financially in his high school days, when Krayzelburg uncomplainingly cut back on his training so he could work longer hours as a lifeguard at the Westside Jewish Community Center to help his parents, Oleg and Yelena, make ends meet. They had emigrated to the U.S. from Odessa, Ukraine, in 1989, when Krayzelburg was 13.

The humble beginnings of his new life in the United States steeled Krayzelburg. His adolescence in southern California innoculated him against the adult disease of material greed.

This year, when the offers and opportunities began pouring in, Mark Schubert, Krayzelburg's coach at Trojan Swim Club and the U.S. men's Olympic coach, sat the swimmer down.

``One of the things I told him,'' Schubert said, ``is not to let the external pressures take over his life this year. And his primary focus really has been no different than it ever was. He's maybe done the best job of anybody I've coached of following advice. A lot of times I've asked him to say 'no' to things and he has.''

Krayzelburg is in demand for the same reason actor Heath Ledger is; he walks into a room and without meaning to he commands perfect strangers to pay attention to him. The humble swimmer crammed as many speaking engagements and commercial spots into his schedule as Schubert would allow. But you should know this: He also squeezed in aerobic spinning classes.

It's enough to make your head spin, just knowing that the man whose legs propelled him to a place no swimmer had ever gone in the backstroke believed his lower body could stand to be stronger.

Success and minor celebrity, it would seem, have yet to spoil Krayzelburg. Former USC swimming great John Naber will second that notion. A few months ago, Naber called Krayzelburg and invited him to lunch.

In 1976, 23 years before Krayzelburg became the first backstroker to swim faster than 1 minute, 56 seconds in the 200 meters with his world-record clocking of 1:55.87, Naber was the first swimmer to break the magical two-minute barrier in the event. Naber won four gold medals and one silver at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, then became the darling of corporate America.

That's the way it worked back then; the Olympic gold medals were in the bank before you cashed in on them.

Naber remembered the pressures to perform that weighed so heavily on him in Montreal and the commercial pressures that tugged at him afterward. He couldn't imagine handling both those stresses at once without feeling like a swimsuit wrung out and then hung out to dry.

He wanted to make sure Krayzelburg's form was holding up OK, that he wasn't coming apart at the seams. When they sat down to lunch, Naber knew before he had decided what to eat that he didn't have to worry about Krayzelburg. The kid was all right.

``I can't imagine the multiplication factor of the pressure he's dealing with, taking money in advance of doing well at the Olympics,'' Naber said from his office in Pasadena. ``In some cases it can be too much pressure to put on an athlete. But of all the people to handle that pressure, Lenny's personality is ideally suited for it. His sense of self-worth has never been determined by the time on a stopwatch. He appreciates the beauty of the sport. Because of his groundedness, he's safe.

``I call him the smiling cobra,'' Naber added, ``because he makes you feel so happy and joyous inside and then he uncoils and, bam, does something remarkable.''

For two years, Krayzelburg didn't lose a backstroke race. Not in workout, where his training partners include 1996 Olympic 200 backstroke champion Brad Bridgewater, or at any meet. Then at the Janet Evans Invitational last month on his home turf, Krayzelburg was beaten in the 200 backstroke by Aaron Peirsol, a rising senior at Newport Harbor High who trains with Irvine Novaquatics.

Krayzelburg was naturally disappointed that he finished second, but he didn't get down. He knew how hard he had trained in the days leading up to the meet. He didn't lose sight of the fact his whole season has been geared toward a peak performance in September. Krayzelburg's father Oleg, however, was a mess.

Yelena Krayzelburg later told her son that at the end of the race, Oleg, who was sitting alongside his wife in the USC Swim Stadium bleachers, ``was as white as a piece of paper. He was in shock.''

Truth to tell, the corporate suits probably were a little pale themselves. They haven't invested beaucoup bucks in Krayzelburg, after all, to see him lose to a 17-year-old so close to Sydney.

It doesn't matter to them that Peirsol reminds a lot of swimming insiders of Krayzelburg four years ago; Peirsol is not the person an NBC producer deposited in a prime Staples Center seat during the Lakers' postseason march to the NBA title (the television cameras then conveniently ``found'' Krayzelburg - an avid Lakers fan, as it so happens - during commercial breaks as a way of promoting the network's upcoming Olympics coverage).

Peirsol is not the marketing world's winning lottery ticket; Krayzelburg is.

In Harry Potter's world, Krayzelburg could use his charm to shield himself from the external forces that could sink him. In lieu of that, Krayzelburg is using common sense.

``It's kind of like two different worlds,'' he said. ``There's the swimming world where I feel in complete control. And there's the marketing world where they're trying to create an image that I have no power over. All I can do is try to focus on the things that have gotten me to this point.''

Krayzelburg nearly arrived on the Olympic scene early enough to crash a couple parties. At the 1996 Olympic Trials in Indianapolis, he shaved two seconds off his best time in the 200 backstroke during the preliminaries and was the second-fastest qualifier for the finals.

Nobody expected him to secure one of the two Olympic berths, least of all himself. Krayzelburg had raced as fast as he could from the start in his morning swim and was in terrible pain afterward. So he decided to swim the first part of his race that night a little slower. He eased his way right out of contention, finishing fifth.

Krayzelburg was too wet behind the ears to know he should have been seriously bummed to have been left home from Atlanta after coming so close to making the team.

``I didn't understand the magnitude of what I had done,'' Krayzelburg said.

Four years later, he gets it. He knows how much is on the line. He understands his life might be on the verge of another sea change.

``It's going to get crazier depending on how well I do at Trials,'' Krayzelburg said. ``I can promise you one thing. No matter what happens, it's not going to change me. I've always been able to keep things in perspective.''

Leaving your homeland for an unfamiliar place has a way of grounding a person. Krayzelburg appreciates that his life already has undergone a dramatic transformation. The way he sees it, whatever happens from here is sunshine on his shoulders.

KRAYZELBURG FILE

Height: 6-foot-2

Weight: 180 pounds

Birthdate: Sept. 28, 1975

Birthplace: Odessa, Ukraine

Family: Father Oleg, Mother Yelena, sister Marsha

High school: Fairfax

College: Santa Monica College; USC (1998)

Residence: L.A.

Notable: Set world records last summer in the 100- and 200-meter backstrokes; is the first swimmer to hold both records concurrently since Russian Igor Poliansky in 1988. Krayzelburg became a U.S. citizen in 1995.

The buzz: Will shortly be gracing the front of Crispix cereal boxes . . . an avid Lakers fan, he tried to buy 2000-2001 season tickets using the money he won on the Grand Prix swimming circuit this year and was, to his great dismay, put on a waiting list.

Olympic Trials swims: 100-meter backstroke final Friday; 200-meter backstroke final Aug. 14 (can also qualify for the 400-meter medley relay in Sydney by winning the 100 backstroke).

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo: (1 -- color) ``No matter what happens, it's not going to change me,'' says Olympic gold favorite Lenny Krayzelburg, a USC graduate.

(2 -- color) It used to take a gold medal to find endorsements, but former USC swimmer Lenny Krayzelburg already has as many as his training schedule will allow even before qualifying at the U.S. Trials.

Phil McCarten/Staff photographer

Box: Krayzelburg file (see text)