It wasn't a typical morning at Juanita Beach Park, with three drownings, a spinal-cord injury from shallow-water diving, a severe dog bite and a heart attack.

But it could have been worse. Fortunately, there were 56 lifeguards on hand to deal with the emergencies and, even more fortunately, the emergencies were all staged.

Each incident was a four-minute test for competitors on eight lifeguard teams from King County and major cities in the area in yesterday's Lake Washington Challenge Cup.

While the simulated disasters far surpassed the number of emergencies lifeguards face each day, they provided a vivid measuring standard for participants.

The event began after another challenge was issued 11 years ago in Vancouver, B.C.

That's when Chuck Kroll, now of the Bellevue Parks and Community ServicesDepartment, and two other aquatics officials - Coy Jones, Renton pool manager, and Mark Jaeger, former Seattle aquatics director who now works for Metro - went to a rescue exercise for lifeguards in Canada.

They remembered a Canadian official's comment that only 2 percent of the lifeguards attending the exercise would ever use what they'd learn there and that most of the knowledge would be lost.

To prevent that, the Lake Washington Challenge was created, with the competition rotating annually among Seattle's Madison Park, Renton's Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park and Juanita Beach Park.

The contest has always been a single-day event. But now it has been expanded to two days, from 8 to 10:30 a.m., so the lifeguards can get to their beaches in time for 11 a.m. openings.

This year's eight teams, each with seven members, were comprised of two from Seattle, three from Bellevue, one from King County, one from Redmond and one from Renton.

The teams waited in sequestered areas and were sent to various beach stations at the start of a four-minute clock. The challenge was to deal with whatever they found, such as a staged drowning or diving injury.

For example, at one station, Cathy Wiederhold, Bellevue aquatics administrator, carefully scored contestants as a "victim" lay screaming on the beach, his arm gashed from a dog bite; the actor was her son, Alex, 11, and the blood was ketchup. Wiederhold rated lifeguards on how they recognized the cause of the injury, the first-aid they administered and their response time.

Competitors then faced the Ironman and Ironwoman events, in which they ran along the beach, swam several hundred yards, ran the beach again, got on paddleboards and circled the swimming course again, and finally sprinted to the finish line.

The fastest competitors took more than six minutes to finish. The slowest staggered in more than five minutes later. Some exhausted racers collapsed in the water, gasping for air, when it ended.

Seattle lifeguards Melinda Gage and Kevin Maxwell received first-place plaques in the Ironwoman and Ironman races and the Seattle Parks Department's "A" team won the first-aid trophy.

The names of the winning team and its members will be engraved on a cup; Seattle won the Challenge the first year, but Bellevue won it in 1994, '95 and '96.

Bellevue's luck didn't hold this year, however, and Seattle's "A" team finished in first place this morning with 65 points, coming in more than 20 points ahead of the nearest challenger.

That happened to be the Seattle "B" team, which logged 41 points. Only a half-point separated the second place from the third-place winner, with that spot going to Bellevue's "A" team, with 40 1/2 points.