THE SON RISES THE KRAYZELBURGS, IMMIGRANTS FROM UKRAINE SEEKING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND OPPORTUNITY, PRODUCED A FINE PERSON - AND ONE OF THE WORLD'S BEST SWIMMERS.

Byline: Karen Crouse Staff Writer

Yelena Krayzelburg arrives at work to the same chorus every morning. Her colleagues at the hospital pharmacy express surprise at seeing her. Not because she is an indifferent employee. Goodness, no. The next sick day Yelena Krayzelburg takes will be her first this year.

It has become a parlor game in the pharmacy, guessing when Yelena Krayzelburg will fill her last prescription because her first born and only son has found every immigrant's elixir, that super-fine mix of fortune and fame.

Whether it's a renewable prescription or a one-shot dose isn't clear, Destiny's scribblings being as illegible as any doctor's. This much is known: Lenny Krayzelburg will race in the 100- and 200-meter backstrokes and the backstroke leg of the 400 medley relay at the upcoming Sydney Olympics for his family's adopted country.

The 24-year-old could be the cure for U.S. Swimming's ailing image abroad. He owns the world records in the 100 and 200 backstrokes and has parlayed his good times, good looks and good manners into a potential seven-figure windfall.

Yelena Krayzelburg's colleagues see Lenny on the front of cereal boxes, in the pages of men's magazines, on network television promotional ads for the Olympics. Then they look at Yelena working as diligently as everand they can't hold their clucking tongues.

``Yelena, Lenny's making good money now,'' they chide her. ``Why are you still working?''

The question exposes the cultural divide that traverses the past and present of Studio City's First Family. Where the Krayzelburgs come from, to be a parent is to ask not what your children can do for you but always, ALWAYS, what you can do for your children.

Lenny, whose eyes fill with love when he talks about his parents, offered to support them so they could enjoy more leisure time. Even as the words left his lips he knew they'd never buy that.

Of course they wouldn't. This is the same couple that argued passionately with a waiter in Indianapolis last month who was trying to give the family its lunch for free after recognizing Lenny during the Olympic Swimming Trials.

They didn't want a free lunch any more than they wished to pose for pictures and sign autographs inside the complex where the Trials were held. ``They were embarrassed'' by the fuss, Lenny said.

Yelena and Oleg's fingerprints are all over the world-class swimmer and person their son has become but they never will be confused with Jim Pierce or Alla Kournikova.

They believe in living their lives for their children, not through them. So while the Krayzelburgs are immensely proud of the big splash Lenny is making, they are careful to stand far enough away that they don't get spattered by his success. They continue to reside in a non-descript apartment, keep their day jobs and live simply amid Southern California's sprawling excess.

``That's the Russian-Jewish culture, I guess,'' Lenny said.

As Yelena recently explained in her clipped English, children do not exist to make their parents' lives easier but to give their parents' lives meaning. They are a blessing, not a birthright; a reflection of their parents, not a mirror.

``We think like that,'' Yelena said. ``Maybe other people think differently.''

Somewhere in the Krayzelburgs' collective commitment to their children lurks a best-seller: ``It takes a Vow of Selflessness to Raise a Child.''

It's obvious Lenny, who lives on his own now, is a chip off the old-world block. The way Oleg and Yelena Krayzelburg see their children is the way their son views his swimming. Right now it is Lenny's baby, his gift; he wouldn't dream of taking it for granted or of treating it carelessly.

After becoming the fastest backstroker in history in August of 1999, Krayzelburg could have become complacent. He could have adopted the attitude that the rest of the world had to get better, not him. He could have missed a practice here or there to run around in the celebrity circles that suddenly were opening to him.

Instead, Krayzelburg added Spinning classes to his workout routine and stepped up his training load at the USC pool where he trains twice a day, leading his coach, Mark Schubert, to say, ``I continue to be amazed at how well he handles his success.''

The tools Krayzelburg has used to keep success nicely trimmed, lest it choke his life, he collected while trying to keep adversity from spreading like a rogue vine.

Yelena and Oleg Krayzelburg uprooted the family in 1989, moving from Odessa, Ukraine, to Southern California expressly so their children, Lenny and Marsha, might enjoy religious freedom and a boundless future.

Swimming looked like a dead end that first year when Lenny was commuting an hour each way by bus to a club in Santa Monica, working as a lifeguard at the Westside Jewish Community Center to help his family make ends meet, studying English and attending school.

Krayzelburg was 14 going on 62. He told his father it was time to retire from swimming. Oleg talked him back to the edge, as it were, by encouraging - OK, exhorting - him to keep jumping in.

So it was Krayzelburg managed to wedge solitary workouts between his lifeguard hours and persevere as Fairfax High's one-person team. From there it was a small jump to Santa Monica College and a huge leap to USC, where Krayzelburg won two individual NCAA crowns and fulfilled the promise first gleaned at an Army Sports Club in the former Soviet Union when he was 6 years old.

Oh, and in 1995 he became a U.S. citizen.

After Krayzelburg had won his first U.S. senior national title but before he was an instantly recognizable face on the international swimming scene, he signed his first endorsement contract, with Speedo swimwear. As part of the terms of his contract, Krayzelburg, who studied finance at USC, finagled a clause that bound Speedo to sending the Krayzelburgs to Sydney if Lenny qualified for the 2000 U.S. Olympic team.

It'll cost Speedo a few thousand dollars but to Krayzelburg the value of Oleg and Yelena and Marsha's presence is priceless.

``It means a lot to me that they'll be there,'' he said.

Oleg and Yelena Krayzelburg were at the Indiana University/Purdue University Natatorium in Indianapolis last month when Krayzelburg won his way onto the U.S. Olympic team in his first event, the 100 backstroke. Addressing the sellout crowd afterward, the swimmer who had struggled to speak the simplest English sentences 10 years earlier began an articulate address by saying, ``First off, I'd like to thank my parents for bringing me here.''

To the U.S., he meant.

His father will have to consult a videotape to know what Lenny said next; his son's words started running together like Oleg's own tears as 11 long and winding years flashed before the elder Krayzelburg's eyes.

``I've never seen him that emotional,'' Krayzelburg said of his dad. ``I was shocked.''

For the son, it was akin to seeing the Tommy Trojan statue on the USC campus weep after a football victory over UCLA. Oleg, after all, has always been the stoic figure the rest of the family rallied around.

When they were taking on bills like water and their American dream was listing badly, Oleg was the anchor that kept the rest of the family moored. His professional life was something less than it would have been in Odessa, but Oleg, a cook by trade, never complained.

When Lenny saw his father's tears in Indianapolis, he understood he was crying at once for a way of life lost and a way of life found.

``It did make me more emotional, seeing that,'' said Krayzelburg, who himself isn't normally given to sentimental displays.

If all goes swimmingly in Sydney, Krayzelburg is pretty sure he'll skip the 2001 World Championships in Japan - the most prestigious competition in the sport outside of the Olympics. Instead, he'll travel to Israel to compete in the Maccabi Games.

The latter is a global gathering every four years of Jewish athletes. To a family that wasn't free to practice its faith until it emigrated to the U.S., it is so much more than that. ``It is, how you say it, a pilgrimage, yes, for Lenny,'' said Yelena.

It also is another way Krayzelburg can honor his parents, whose contribution to his success obviously extends well beyond their gene pool.

``Lenny has every right in the world to be an arrogant man,'' said fellow U.S. Olympian Erik Vendt, a training partner at USC. ``But you look at him and he's so hard-working, so humble. He's a class act and that comes from a great upbringing.''

All Yelena will say is this: ``When we were in Indianapolis, so many people came up to us and said, `Thank you for Lenny. He is a gentleman.' They said, `Maybe you have some secret how to raise him?' ''

She laughed. There are no secrets, just sacrifices. World-class parents, world-class athletes, they're not so different. They both gear their lives toward achieving lofty goals.

The link to Spitz 

The Sydney Games are a week away and already Studio City's Lenny Krayzelburg is being projected as a matinee idol, the likes of which swimming hasn't seen since Mark Spitz in 1972.

There's more to the comparisons to Spitz than good looks and savvy marketing. Like Spitz, Krayzelburg is Jewish. That might not seem like a big deal in a day when Joseph Lieberman is presidential hopeful Al Gore's running mate on the Democratic ticket.

But in 1968, when Spitz was supposed to collect his gold-medal harvest, his religious affiliation became part of the story of his disappointing performance. During a pre-Olympics training camp, a couple of Spitz's U.S. teammates directed anti-Semitic comments at him. Spitz was unnerved by the persistent verbal attacks and, once in Mexico City, never recovered his pre-Games form.

He won two gold medals in relays but finished eighth in the 200 butterfly, an event in which he had held the world record, second in the 100 butterfly and third in the 100 freestyle.

Four years later, Spitz won seven gold medals to become the most-decorated athlete in a single Olympics.

Reached at his L.A. home recently, Spitz said big egos were more of a factor than bigotry in his being tormented in 1968. ``People were jealous I was swimming in all those events,'' Spitz said.

Krayzelburg, 24, said he hasn't faced anything of the sort. ``Nothing like that at all,'' he said.

Even if Krayzelburg did, Spitz suspects the Trojan Swim Club standout would handle it better than he did in 1968.

``Lenny's also older,'' Spitz said. ``I was 18 in 1968.''

LENNY KRAYZELBURG

Age: 25

Residence: Studio City

College: USC

Past Olympics: None

Highlights: Won 100- and 200-meter backstroke at U.S. Olympic Trials . . . won 100 and 200 back world titles in '98 . . . set world record in 100 back at '99 Pan Pacific Championships . . . played basketball at Fairfax High School . . . born in Odessa, Ukraine.

CAPTION(S):

photos, box

Photo: no caption (Lenny Krayzelburg)

Box: (1) LENNY KRAYZELBURG (see text)

(2) The link to Spitz (see text)