Olympics countdown     9   Days until opening ceremonies of the Summer Games in Athens, Greece

Back home in Bloemfontein, South Africa, Ryk Neethling has demands for his autograph, his photograph, his time and his every uttered line. "They have approached about me doing some TV sports stuff," he says. "When I'm home, I'm doing a photo shoot with a different media outlet every day." Here, he is almost wholly obscure. He could walk through the Tucson Mall all weekend carrying a placard stating his accomplishments - nine NCAA swimming championships, seven gold medals in World Cup competition - and he would get less attention than a Channel 13 weekend weather guy. In his eight years as a Tucsonan, Neethling has gone from being one of the world's five most feared distance swimmers through a remarkable transformation that finds him as one of the world's five or six fastest sprinters. It is the equivalent of Ichiro Suzuki suddenly hitting 60 home runs. Yet Neethling would not have been able to continue his training at the world-class level unless a few prominent Tucsonans - among them car dealer Buck O'Reilly, developer Bill Estes and philanthropist Mike Kasser - had supplied him with financial support. "I could've made it without the help of those men, but I wouldn't be where I am now," Neethling says. "I've been able to concentrate on training and chase my dream. I'm very grateful for what Tucson has done for me." A world-class swimmer does one thing. He prepares himself to swim faster. Morning and afternoon. Day after day. Thirty hours a week. Fifty-two weeks a year. If he can cut one scant second from his time - one second every 12 months - it is considered an enormous jump. In international swimming, there are no flukes, no one-year wonders, no out-of-the-woodwork surprises. Neethling is ranked No. 3 in the world in the 100 meter freestyle entering the Athens Olympics next week. It can be traced to a decade of training and nothing else. Here's how serious it is: "If I break down and have even two pieces of Chicken McNuggets at McDonalds, I can feel the oil in my body within 10 minutes," he says. "If I let down and eat like that, as soon as I jump in the water, I feel slow." After two Olympiads and countless international competitions, Neethling knows the drill. He also knows how the fame-game goes. Neethling and USA basketball Olympian Richard Jefferson were contemporaries at the UA. Jefferson, an explosive jumper, was often labeled as the school's best pure athlete. But Neethling, at 6 feet 5 inches, a chiseled 200-pounds - fat content: something close to zero - was no worse than 1-A to Jefferson. The comparisons - and Jefferson's salary of close to $2 million annually - make Neethling chuckle. "Compare the way I live to the way Richard lives, and it's no contest," he says. "But that's fine. I love what I do." What sets Neethling apart from most Olympians, most athletes, is that he steadfastly contends that he will be happier if South Africa wins a medal in the 4x100 freestyle relay than if he wins one himself in the 100- or 200-meter freestyle finals. This commendable (if rare) approach to a mostly individual sport at first sounds crazy. But after finishing fifth in the 1,500 meters in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and fourth in the same event in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Neethling's perspective is different from most first-time Olympians. "First, I'm tired of my country getting its butt kicked in international sports in everything but golf (Retief Goosen, Nick Price, Ernie Els)," Neethling says. "Second, in my years at the UA, the most rewarding experience was not when I won (nine) NCAA championships, but when we, as a team, beat (powerful) Stanford in a dual meet for the first time in history. That was my greatest experience in Tucson." Given that conviction, Neethling is prepared to forgo his 200 freestyle race in Athens, if necessary, to concentrate on the 4x100 relay. That has become an issue because the relay race is scheduled for Aug. 15, the same day as preliminaries for the 200 freestyle. South Africa's 4x100 team is essentially a Tucson team. Former UA star Roland Schoeman, a medal favorite in the 50-freestyle, and UA junior Lyndon Ferns are expected to join Neethling on the South African 4x100 team. One other swimmer will be determined in an Aug. 11 trial in Greece. Swimming analysts rank the Schoeman-Neethling-Ferns team to be of medal capability, along with Australia, America, Russia, Italy and France. It takes on special importance given that only one South African male has ever won an Olympic swimming medal. "I'll withdraw from the 200 if it will improve our teams' chances in the relay," says Neethling. "That's what matters most." Neethling, Schoeman, Ferns and UA assistant coach Rick DeMont, hired by South Africa to coach the Wildcats at the Olympics, will leave for Greece on Thursday. For Neethling, his challenge is that the greatest names in contemporary swimming - Australia's Ian Thorpe, Dutch star Pieter van den Hoogenband, Russia's Andrew Popov, America's Gary Hall Jr. and Jason Lezak - await in his speed events. It is notable that Neethling's return from Greece is unsettled. He is not sure if he will fly back to Tucson or to his home in Bloemfontein. "All of our medal winners will be flown to South Africa for a celebration," he says. "That's the flight I plan to be on." Olympics countdown 9 Days until opening ceremonies of the Summer Games in Athens, Greece