By Neil Schmidt
Enquirer staff writer

Becky Jasontek isn't in synchronized swimming for the recognition, because there isn't much. Reaching the Olympics is pretty much all one can aspire to.

Yet now that she will be going to the Olympics, the Loveland native suddenly is popping up all over TV.

She and some of her Olympic teammates appear in an AFLAC commercial that has had heavy airplay. And today, the team will perform on The Late Show with David Letterman (11:35 p.m., Ch. 12).

"It's really fun," the 29-year-old Mount Notre Dame High grad said of the attention. "Synchronized swimming doesn't normally get much of anything, so this is great."

It has even paid off in the literal sense. The U.S. team members receive some royalties from the commercial.

"We never get any money except some from the U.S. Olympic Committee, so this helped pay some bills," Jasontek said.

A pool will be constructed on the street outside the Ed Sullivan Theater for tonight's show. It's just 5 feet deep, so the team will amend its routine.

Jasontek said she got a kick out of working with the AFLAC duck for the commercial. In fact, there were several such live ducks.

"They had a trailer full that all looked alike, but they said each one had different talents," she said. "They also had a puppet that looked like a duck, and the shot where the duck flies out of the water, I think, was computer-generated."

Jasontek has one line in the commercial. Four of the swimmers take turns leaping out of the water, each saying part of a sentence. Jasontek leaps second and says, "You'd have that ... "

The commercial can be viewed on www.aflac.com.

Jasontek has been on the national team 13 times but is competing in her first Olympics. She would have made the team in 2000 but for a ruptured ovarian cyst that required emergency surgery and rendered her the alternate.

Jasontek and her teammates will compete Aug. 26-27 in Athens.

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E-mail nschmidt@enquirer.com