Rowdy (raud e) (adj): Very Fast

Two days after he broke Jonty Skinner's 1977 world record in the 100-meter freestyle, Rowdy Gaines decided Sunday not to attend the U.S. Short Court Championship and hang up his Speedo for the last time.

"It's just something I'll have to get used to." Gaines said, adding that "in five years my times won't even get in the top six."

Ambrose Gaines IV is no lexicographer, but he has changed the definition of one word for people who follow swimming. "Rowdy," to them, no longer means rough or disorderly. It means rapidly successful, competitive, and very, very fast. It means Ambrose Gaines IV.

Almost everyone calls him Rowdy, a name borrowed from Clint Eastwood's character on the old Rawhide TV series, Rowdy Yates.

"My parents thought it was a cute nickname." Gaines, a senior at Auburn University, says. "They didn't think it would stick."

And a decade or so ago. Gaines didn't think his swimming career would stick. He swam when he was nine or ten years old, enjoyed moderate success, and quit.

"I don't know why I got back into it." Gaines, a native of Winter Haven. Fla., says of his return to swimming in the middle of his junior year in high school. "I knew I had to do something other than get drunk every weekend."

Gaines says he was "too small for football, too short for basketball, and not quick enough for baseball. And all of his friends were swimmers.

To call Gaines' accomplishments since then a "swimming career" would be misleading. In a sport where the best start at six or seven years of age. Gaines' success after beginning as a 17 year old is phenomenal. When he swam his last event this year, his entire "career" had lasted less than six years.

From a 16th-place finish in the 200-yd. freestyle at the Florida high school championships his junior year. Gaines stroked to American records in the 100- and 200-yd. freestyles at 42.38 and 1:33.80 and to the world mark in the 200-meter freestyle at 1:49.16. For his efforts he was named World Swimmer of the Year for 1980.

Last Friday in Austin. Texas, Gaines reaffirmed his spring dominance, setting a new world record of 49.36 in the 100-meter freestyle and eclipsing the old mark by .08 seconds.

"I beat it, but not by much." Gaines says of his feat. "I really wanted to go a little faster."

Gaines calls the 200-meter world record his greatest accomplishment as a swimmer. "I set it a year ago and it still hasn't sunk in--I think about when it will be broken sometimes. It'll probably go this summer, or in the spring when the Russians have their big meet."

Gaines admits that he doesn't enjoy the rigorous training necessary for world-class competition--swimming five hours a day, 20 miles a week. "If an average bystander compared our regimen to any other sport he'd say swimming was the hardest to train for."

Nonetheless, Gaines has enjoyed swimming. "I may bitch and moan, but I wouldn't trade it. It's taken me to China. Hawaii. Germany--all over the world--given me a full scholarship to college, and made me friends forever.

"The winning," he is quick to add, "doesn't hurt either. Winning is the only thing that really matters--records can be broken, but winning can never be taken away."

Gaines attributes his drive to his family: "We've always been real competitive, dedicated to excelling. If I want to get anywhere in life. I'll have to have this same kind of dedication after swimming. If I don't I'll end up a bum in the gutter."

It is his competitiveness that makes Gaines outspoken about last year's boycott of the Moscow Olympics. "All the disappointments in my career, my life, could not add up to that one disappointment. I'd rather have one Olympic gold medal than five world records 'cause you just can't take that medal away. I just can't say I beat their times at Moscow and won four gold medals--that's bull, anything could've happened," he sights.

Majoring in mass communication at Auburn, Gaines plans a career in broadcasting or the motion-picture industry. He also says that he would consider joining Mark Spitz and Donna DeVarona as a swimming-color commentator, adding that he eventually "wants to get behind the scenes producing, directing and editing."