proven (in Atlanta), but certainly her behaviour later was - I think they should be prosecuted for fraud." Smith's win in the 400m IM had cost Wagner "hundreds of thousands of dollars".

It had also robbed her of her one chance in a lifetime to win an Olympic gold medal. "You can't even imagine how hard these athletes work in the sport of swimming for that one moment in time. But I would submit that when Allison Wagner has grandchildren she can tell them the story and tell them that she was the best swimmer in the world at the time. Michelle Smith couldn't honestly tell her children the same."

Two days after her first gold she won her second in the 400 metres freestyle. She did it in a time of 4 minutes and 7.25 seconds. If any of her events provoked scepticism among the swimming community in Atlanta, it was the 400m free. And not just scepticism but outright incredulity. In April 1995 she swam a personal best of 4:26.18. In July 1996 she swam 4:08.64 in Florida. Three weeks later she won Olympic gold with a time of 4:07.25. In the space of 16 months she had chopped almost 19 seconds off her personal best. A rate of improvement that was not so much dubious as farcical.

Her 4:08.64 swim in Florida came a day late for official entries for Atlanta. It was not an officially sanctioned event, the pool was not fitted with electronic pads and the time sheet was filled out the following day. Nevertheless the Olympic Council of Ireland submitted an application to have Smith entered in the 400m free. The USA, Germany and the Netherlands objected. They were overruled and, at 26, Smith became the oldest winner ever of the event. The average age of the ten previous winners was 17.

"We protested," recalls Schubert, "and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) allowed the entry. We were extremely sceptical when we saw her entry because she hadn't done any performance (previously) close to that. It's always very suspicious when somebody hasn't done a good time and all of a sudden, that close to a competition, does one of the fastest performances ever. If she had been a 16-year-old you would think, okay, she's an up-and-comer and she's just emerged. But Michelle was no spring chicken at the time."

'In my field you're innocent until you're proven guilty and that was the attitude I had. She didn't have her Olympic medals taken off her'

Marion Madine Janet Evans was 17 when she won gold in the 400m free at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. The holder of four Olympic gold medals and the darling of American swimming, she missed out on the 1996 final by one place. At a press conference in Atlanta she was asked for her view on Smith's performances. People had been talking about it on the deck, she said. Evans was accused, in America as well as Ireland, of bad sportsmanship and sour grapes. Gwen Knapp, a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle, was at the press conference and says Evans was given an unfair rap. A journalist from the Chicago Tribune had argued that when various Chinese and East European swimmers did things that were "unbelievable", American swimmers had accused them of doping. "And now that you have an Irish woman, a woman who looks like she could be an American, who could be the girl-next-door here, doing things that are unbelievable and off the charts, what are the Americans saying? She was answering a question that was saying, do you apply the same standards to every athlete or is this woman so much like all you guys, you're not going to accuse her? And she said, well yes, there are people talking on the deck. She couldn't really not answer the question." Evans wasn't the only competitor affected by Smith's late entry to the 400m free. Marion Madine from county Down had been scheduled for that event but in the horse-trading that followed, was asked to drop down to the 200m freestyle instead. A lawyer now living in Arizona, she wasn't shunted out of the 400m, she says, and has no hard feelings about the situation. She was asked to swap events and she consented. "In hindsight it probably wasn't the right decision," she says, "but it didn't ruin my Olympics. I did a personal best (in the 200m) so I can't complain." Like everyone else in Atlanta she was aware of the speculation surrounding Smith but didn't subscribe to it. "In my field you're innocent until you're proven guilty and that was the attitude I had. She didn't have her Olympic medals taken off her, she didn't test positive then, (and) I work on the basis that unless you can give me some sort of cold, hard proof that at the time of the Olympics she was taking drugs, then you've just got to say she's innocent until proven guilty." Richard Quick was coach to the US women's team in Atlanta. Previously he had coached at the University of Texas around the same time that Smith was competing for the University of Houston. "And she was not even a major player in the south west conference swimming championships," he says. "I certainly think that we have to assume that if Michelle tested positive later on, that she was probably using performance-enhancing drugs in Atlanta. We just have to assume that." Quick, like a lot of people, asks what Smith de Bruin is doing now. "Is she still married to that guy?" he asks. The guy in question of course is Erik de Bruin. He met his future wife at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. He had competed for Holland in the discus at the 1984 and 1988 games. In August 1993 he tested positive and was banned for four years. By then he had taken over Smith's training regime. Her two gold medals in the 400m events were followed by gold in the 200m individual medley and bronze in the 200m butterfly. She had barely begun her medal haul when the first questions were fired her way. Her performance in front of the world's press that week in Atlanta had such conviction and poise that ultimately she seemed more credible out of the pool than in it. Her explanations centred around the new regime created for her by Erik, now her husband. "Anyone who makes it to the Olympics trains hard," she said, "but I think I also trained smart. A lot of that is to do with my husband's background in track and field. We try to translate some of the principles of athletics into the swimming programme. I'm a lot stronger than I was three or four years ago." In a 1993 interview with a Dutch newspaper Erik de Bruin made his views clear on performance-enhancing drugs. "Who says doping is unethical?" he asked. "Who decides what is ethical? Is politics ethical? Is business ethical? Sports is by definition dishonest. Some people are naturally gifted, others have to work very hard. Some people are not going to make it without extra help." In 1995 he was refused a coach's accreditation to the European Championships in Vienna because of his four-year ban. He used the accreditation of a Belgian official to gain entry into the doping control area. In 2003 he pleaded guilty to shoplifting in Kilkenny and was given the Probation Act. 'When he became her coach her capacity raised so quickly - I mean, this caused suspicions' Gunnar Werner Peter Lennon agrees that while Michelle is still fondly regarded by many Irish people, they would have reservations about her husband. "I think that's probably fair comment. They don't know him because I think like most Dutch people he's an extremely private individual. And people will hold the view that she is guilty by association. But, Erik was her trainer and became her husband and, you know, Michelle and Erik are an intensely close couple - and always will be I think." Gunnar Werner was secretary of FINA during the doping case and had known Smith as a middle-ranking swimmer for many years before Atlanta. Seven years on from the CAS hearing he says he has sympathy for her. "Because her husband obviously was the man behind all this and put her into this position. I think maybe he was too strong. When he became her coach her capacity raised so quickly - I mean, this caused suspicions." A retired lawyer, the 76-year-old Swede says FINA had their suspicions when she made her international breakthrough at the Vienna championships in 1995. She was world-famous by the time she tested positive in 1998. Her case raised the stakes considerably for FINA. "It was important for many reasons," he says. "It was one of the first cases when somebody tried to tamper with a sample." It was first time that a CAS hearing had been open to the media. Did that add to the pressure? "I would say, publicly yes but legally no. We were not afraid of losing the case because all the facts were on our side." The most damning fact of all was the androstenodione. Lennon does not accept she was using the substance. "I wouldn't, no. We didn't get into the chemical analysis of the breakdown of the samples or the procedures that were used because a) we couldn't have afforded to do it, b) it wasn't an issue that we believed we'd have to fight, and c) without having someone looking at those re-testing procedures and looking at what was contained within the samples and saying to me, 'Well this could have happened from her taking a form of contraceptive pill, or it could have happened from her taking a combination of health supplements'. It would be absolutely mad on my part to say I accept that, based upon the sampling procedures that took place, and the results of those procedures, that Michelle at some stage took performance-enhancing, or any form of banned substance. Because I don't accept that." She never, he adds, tested positive in competition, unlike Chinese and eastern bloc swimmers. "Michelle went to all the various events, won her medals at the various events, was tested at all those events and was found not to have any banned substances." The case effectively dominated his life for a year and a half. If it didn't dominate public life it was part of the national conversation for three years after Atlanta. And for many people interested in sport, her case was seminal, a sort of year zero that forced them to re-evaluate their belief in elite sport. "That's probably a view that I suppose a lot of people would hold," says Lennon. "The only thing I'd say is this: first of all you're either in the Michelle camp or you're out of the Michelle camp and I don't think anybody treads a halfway line. My view is somewhat different, maybe that's because I'm in the Michelle camp. I would think a lot of people feel that she was very hard done by in relation to the manner in which the case was dealt with, and how publicly it was dealt with, and how her entire life and every movement of her life was exposed." And part of the public debate was driven by a number of Irish sports journalists who refused to toe the party line. "In fairness to them," says Lennon, "they were effectively doing what I suppose good journalists do. It would have been easy for them to have wrapped the flag around themselves and to have effectively said we'll go the other way. They didn't, and they kept at it." 'I don't think she tainted her country, I don't think she tainted her sport, I think she shamed herself' Mark Schubert And it damaged her. "Oh definitely. I think it damaged her because it was just relentless. I think Tom Humphries (Irish Times), certainly if he was to do an analysis of his back page Monday morning column over those years, she would certainly have featured in more column inches I think than anybody else. I mean, Tom could be talking about the All-Ireland hurling final and somewhere in the body of the piece would be a reference to Michelle. He is undoubtedly a fine scribe, he really is, (but) when it was over, and if you take it that he won, he's obviously entitled to some euphoria. But after a while I have to say that in my view it just went beyond the normal and acceptable bounds of reasonableness." Lennon contrasts the way in which he feels Smith de Bruin was treated in Ireland with the way Linford Christie was treated in England. Christie was bumped up to the gold medal position after Johnson tested positive in Seoul. Years later he was finally run down and exposed as a drugs cheat. Last week Christie was a member of the British coaching staff at the European athletics championships in Gothenburg. "If you look at it - and I suppose it's part of our national psyche - if you look at the difference between the way in which Michelle was treated by the media in Ireland and the way Linford Christie was treated by the media and by the other sporting organisations in the UK, they were so divergent it's almost untrue. He's doing media appearances left, right and centre and his public persona is not affected by it one little bit." The interest of the UK media in Smith's case was, he says, "quite incredible". Craig Lord, swimming correspondent for the London Times, was prominent in their coverage. "I could ask the rhetorical question, where was Craig Lord in relation to Linford Christie, or where were his colleagues in the Times in relation to Linford Christie?" He doesn't believe that she tainted swimming as a sport - and neither does Mark Schubert. "I think the majority of international swimmers are clean," says Schubert. I don't think she tainted her country, I don't think she tainted her sport, I think she shamed herself." Lennon believes that after everything, Irish people still have a lot of affection for her. "People will often ask me how she is, how she is doing. I think a lot of people like her." She's living a different life now, with her two children and a new career. After 1999, says Lennon, "it couldn't have got any worse for her anyway. She had to move on and she has moved on."