Running the race; keeping the faith: Olympic athletes find that their spiritual lives keep training demands in perspective.

Wheaties, the Breakfast of Champions!" Under this slogan emblazoned across each orange Wheaties box, Olympic gold medalists with perfect scores, such as Mary Lou Retton and Bruce Jenner, practically flip and spin off the cardboard right into your bowl of 100 percent flaky wheat cereal. No doubt General Mills hopes the medalists' phenomenal physiques and victory smiles will awaken athletic ambition and, even better, a healthy appetite in the sleepiest breakfaster.

Though the following athletes may never cross this box of fame, they will light up your television set this summer with their talent at Atlanta's Olympic Games. Who are they? Here's a closer look at some Christian athletes behind the scores.

Sheryl Swoopes 

As a six-foot guard on the U.S.A. Basketball Women's National Team, Sheryl Swoopes looks a vision of physical perfection. Proof is in performance, though, and on the court the 24-year-old moves with riveting speed. Amid the game's suspenseful, irregular drumming, watch her "create her own shot" in short order. A decisive dribble, stop, turn, jump, and it's another Swoopes' swooooosh! "That," she modestly agrees, "is a strength in my game."

Off court she's a touch glamorous--someone you could imagine as a television network sports anchor. In a soft drawl acquired in her Brownsfield, Texas, hometown, she shares other aspects of her celebrated status. "Basketball's my first love, but no sport comes easily to me. There are days," she continues, "when I just don't want to go to the gym or see a basketball or even say the word basketball. And I never knew for sure that I'd be playing basketball after college or going to the Olympics. So every single day I had to work on it."

To succeed in Atlanta she sticks to a blueprint weight lifting three times a week for an hour, a 30-minute aerobic workout three times a week in the pool, on the bike, Stair Master or treadmill, and a two-hour workout on the court, five days a week. Tiring? "Not as much as traveling," she says with snappy sureness. "We just get on a plane and go from city to city without ever really being able to rest. I think God put me in the situation, though, because He knew I could handle it. And I know it won't be like this forever."

Even as a 7-year-old playing basketball with her brothers, lames and Earl, Swoopes remembers seeing this Olympic dream. Today, it shimmers tantalizingly close to a real possibility. "Before practice and games I always pray. Otherwise, I'm not ready to play. Then I just let God do the rest. My mom always says everything I've done is through God's grace. I know what she means now. Whatever success I have is from Him."

Becky Dyroen-Lancer

At age 5 doctors repaired a hole in Becky Dyroen-Lancer's heart, and at age 9 the San lose, California, native splashed into the sport in which she now reigns. Who could have guessed her eventual place as the number one synchronized swimmer in the nation and the world since 1993? Or that she'd be the best ever in her sport's 53-year history?

When it comes to competition, Dyroen-Lancer and her teammates hold their breath--usually about 30 seconds at a time. Begin understanding synchronized swimmers better by thinking of them as water gymnasts. Then rethink what it's like holding your breath that long while vigorously exercising underwater. Hmmmm . . . Air, anyone?

That's something coaches say Dyroen-Lancer, 25, has plenty of. According to the team's physical trainer, Dr. Don Chu, she possesses astonishing aerobic capacity and a prototypical body type for the sport. Whatever favorable predispositions her mother, also a synchronized swimmer, bequeathed her, Dyroen-Lancer uses them only as a springboard. Even natural ability takes work to polish, and that's been her goal for the past 15 years. Susannah Bianco, her sister and teammate, remarks that "Becky's in the pool before and after the rest of us. She's earned her place."

Looking back, Dyroen-Lancer remembers her first impressions of synchronized swimming with a chuckle. "This is a little girl's dream, complete with costumes You get to do cool stuff and travel places." True enough, only Olympic training also means working 40 hours or more a week. She practices "water work" like speed swimmers with laps and turns as well as the choreography. Three times a week the team runs, cycles, steps, etc., for aerobic cross training and incorporates strength-conditioning sessions. Just as frequently they focus on flexibility, the beauty elixir of their sport.

Finally, they prepare through mental strategies "without all the hocuspocus," according to Dyroen-Lancer. "It's easy to train hard all day and then still feel unfulfilled," she explains. "Learning how to organize what we've accomplished in a day and think about it differently helps."

Juggling part-time school and work hours on top of all this leaves nearly no time for rest and relaxation. But each week this champion goes to church and usually spends her remaining leisure time with her husband.

"My life has always been very busy, but walking in Christ is so much a daily thing," says Dyroen-Lancer. "All the 'whet ifs' and the many competitions make me worry. But worrying doesn't help anything. So I just give them all to God and let Him deal with them. My husband and I both just ask that God's will be done in our lives."

Pam Mellskog is a freelance writer living St. Paul, Minnesota.

RELATED ARTICLE: Byron Davis 

Editor's note: On March 10, 1996, Byron Davis swam in the 100-meter butterfly final at the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials. The top two finishers would be on this summer's U.S. Olympic Swim Team. Though be led the race at the halfway point, Bryon finished fourth, missing the Olympics by three-tenths of a second.

Though be won't be representing America in Atlanta, we thought his story was still important to tell.

In 1992 this 100-meter butterfly swimmer finished his senior year at UCLA on a low note. "I felt very down," Davis recalls. "My girlfriend and I broke up, and my college career hadn't blossomed as I had expected. It was a bad year, and I felt angry at the sport. Usually people who hit this point hang up their swimming trunks and move on with their life." After graduating in 1993, he stopped swimming until two years later, when he recognized that he had buried "unfinished business" in the water.

"It was nothing specific," Davis says. "I just knew that swimming again would help me resolve some frustration and keep it from other areas of my life."

Ultimately, he plunged back into a strenous Olympic-oriented program to exercise his faith. "The biggest lesson that I've learned throughout this whole ordeal is that faith is not ignorance or denial. Instead," he explains. "it's the true outward expression of your thankfulness for God's grace, mercy, and opportunity."

Since boyhood days in Cleveland, Ohio, Byron's been developing body and faith. Yet nothing's challenged him like this. He trains six days a week in Colorado Springs with the Resident National Team Program for Swimming. He teeter-totters eight- to 12-week training cycles from endurance and flexibility to a power and speed focus. During aerobic endurance cycles, Davis eats four or five meals day and consumes nearly 7,000 calories, 5,000 more than the average man. "But," he adds, "I stay in tune with what my body craves and go with that; usually it includes plenty of fruits and vegetables."

A day in his life begins at 5:30 a.m., and shortly thereafter he stretches on deck 30 minutes, trains for two and a half hours in the pool, eats a quick breakfast, and then naps 30 minutes to an hour. He and team member spend the next hour reviewing films of themselves and their competition before diving in to understand the training process better. After lunch the lifts weights, and then it's back into the pool for another two-and-one-half-hour workout, which winds down around 6:00 or 6:30 p.m.

Because the butterfly stroke involves such dramatic out-of-water recovery, no conditioning is wasted. "I'm 26, and this is the best shape I've ever been in," Davis remarks.

What's the biggest lesson he's learned during his comeback campaign? "This impetus of this whole thing has been to become more aware of the power of God at work in my life. With my faith of a mustard seed, Good is constantly helping me move mountains. Through this whole ordeal I'm learning to find peace in the process of struggle."