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Pot of GoldThe precious medals won by Ireland's Michelle Smith were tarnished by controversyby Leigh Montville
Patricia Smith decided to pray a bit inside her room at the Days Inn in
Stone Mountain, Ga. She saw that the time was five past 11 on the first
morning of the Olympic swimming competition, and she was frantic. Prayer
was the only answer. Television had failed.
"Do you know the song about 57 channels and nothing's on?" she said.
"That was the truth."
Popov and Hall (second and third from left) were one-two
here in the 50 free, as well as in the 100.
photograph by
She and her husband, Brian, had clicked across the buffet line of
choices—cartoon conflict, the talking heads of American
politicians, headline news, even coverage of the XXVI Summer
Olympics—and had found everything and nothing at the same time.
Nothing that they had wanted to see.
They had tickets for the women's 400-meter individual medley swimming
finals that night at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center—tickets
purchased long ago through the Irish athletic federation—but had
not been able to buy tickets for the qualifying heats that were taking
place, check the clock, right this minute.
They were on a modest budget, their trip sponsored by contributions made
through a neighborhood pub. What if Michelle did not qualify for the
final? She had never made a final in two previous Olympics. Brian, the
optimist, said, "Not to worry," but Patricia could see herself selling
the tickets to strangers before the evening session. There might be no
need to go.
What was wrong with American television? Where were the heats? If she
and Brian had stayed home in Rathcoole, on the outskirts of Dublin, they
would have been fine. Two channels. No cable. No problem. Michelle would
be on the screen in Ireland. For sure.
The telephone rang at half 11. A broadcaster from RTE, the Irish
national television system, wanted to know what Patricia thought about
Michelle's performance. "I don't know," she said. "What was it?"
"Brilliant," the broadcaster said. "She's in the final."
The week of the magic had begun. By the time Michelle
Smith—Patricia and Brian's 26-year-old daughter, oldest of four
children—had finished her mad work in the pool, she would have
three gold medals, one bronze and the hearts and minds and sleep
patterns of her entire country in her pocket. She would be one of the
most successful and controversial figures ever to flail through the
chlorinated waters of an Olympics.
Television? There would be no trouble finding Michelle Smith on any
television anywhere.
She came from nowhere, from the depths of the form charts that assumed
she was too old and too slow, from a country that does not have one
Olympic-sized, 50-meter-long pool. Still, she won gold in the 200- and
the 400-meter IMs and the 400 freestyle, and got the bronze medal in the
200 butterfly.
Leprechauns danced and freckles had hidden powers and she did things
that no one ever had done in a swimming pool, winning her medals in
individual races rather than in relays as some other, better-known
multimedal champions have.
"She has surpassed everything that has ever been done in Irish sport,"
Ireland's minister of sport, Bernard Allen, freshly arrived from Dublin,
said last Friday night. "I was in Parliament the other day when
everything stopped to approve a message of congratulations to her. Both
benches supported the motion." This was the Irish version.
She also was a cheat, a finagler. She somehow found a way, with the aid
of her new husband, who has also been her trainer for the past three
years, to skirt the drug rules of her sport. She was an undocumented
addition to those documented miscreants from China and East Germany. How
could she have improved so quickly? Without medicinal help? How? She
somehow hadn't been caught yet.
The Games were a happy blur for Bennett, whose 800-free victory made her the new distance queen.
photograph by
"We've given people the benefit of the doubt for too long," U.S. women's
coach Richard Quick said after Smith had knocked an amazing 13 1/2
seconds off her previous best time this year by winning the 400 IM in
4:39.18. "It's time we investigate sudden jumps in performance." This
was the American version.
Every other day for the first week of the Games, this redheaded woman
with broad shoulders and a hydrodynamic, knee-length bathing suit that
looked like something out of the 1920s swam faster than she ever had.
Every other day she would report to a tense press conference at which
Irish reporters would preface all questions with melodious
congratulations and American reporters would throw undisguised darts.
She faced down her accusers. She smiled in the right places. One night,
an off night, she met President Clinton in the stands, and they talked
as equals about the "crap" the media can deliver. She told the story at
the next press conference. In English. Again in Gaelic.
She was eloquent and tough. No, she had never taken
performance-enhancing drugs. Never. Plain enough? The past of her
husband, 33-year-old former discus thrower Erik de Bruin of the
Netherlands, suspended after a positive drug test in 1993, was not part
of the interview process. Next question. She improved through hard work,
hard work, then some more hard work. O.K.?
The Americans cocked an eyebrow at her story. The Irish turned it into a
poem to be recited, a song to be sung over a slowly drawn pint of
Guinness on a midsummer's night. "The whole country's going mad," Sean
Ban Breathnach, a Gaelic radio reporter, declared. "No one can get any
sleep, her races are on so late. No work is being done. I just called my
wife. The post usually comes at half 10. It still hadn't come at a
quarter to six. The whole country's stopped."
"She's always been an achiever," Sarah, Michelle's 24-year-old sister,
says. "She never smoked, never drank. She was the one who got up at five
in the morning to train when the rest of us would want to sleep. She got
A's in school. She went to college in America, University of Houston,
and one of the required courses was American history. She didn't know
anything about American history at the start, but at the end she got the
only A in the class. That's just how she is."
The drive came from inside. Isn't that how champions work? The drive was
her most natural gift. She started in the old 25-meter pool at King's
Hospital in Dublin, the water so cold sometimes that it felt as if it
contained ice cubes. Brian, the owner of a small auto-parts shop, simply
wanted all three of his girls, plus his son, to learn how to swim so
they wouldn't drown. Michelle was in love with the sport from the first
minute.
"You know, I don't want you to be thinking I'm pushing you into this,"
Brian told her as she became more and more competitive. "This has to be
your choice." He gave her the family alarm clock. If she wanted to get
up for the early practices, she would have to decide to do it. She then
could wake him up to take her to the pool. He wasn't going to wake her.
Her decision.
Michelle never backed away. By the time she was 18, having graduated
from a Gaelic-speaking school but talking English at home, she was in
the Olympics in Seoul. Brian was the only family member present, sent by
donations from the town. The South Koreans read his nametag wrong and
called him Brain. Hello, Brain. This was her international debut,
finishing 17th in her best race, the 200-meter backstroke.
By the time the Barcelona Games rolled around in 1992, she had trained
for 18 months in Calgary and two years in Houston. She got homesick a
lot but followed the sport where it took her, looking for more success.
She carried the Irish flag at the opening ceremonies. Her performances
were doomed by degenerative disks, her best finish a 26th in the 400 IM.
Her most important moment in Barcelona turned out to be a lunch date she
had with a friend who was a friend of a Dutch walker who was trained by
De Bruin. De Bruin was at the lunch, and a relationship was soon formed.
A love relationship. "Michelle came back from Barcelona and was just
moping about the house," Sarah says. "I told her the race was done and
she should get on with her life. She said, no, that wasn't a problem.
She had met a guy she liked, and he hadn't called. I told her to forget
that, too; that maybe they'd had a good time, but it was over now. At
that moment, just like the movies, the phone rang. It was Erik."
He not only saw her again, but he also eventually wanted to train her in
Rotterdam. He had never trained a swimmer but thought the theories of
track and field training could be brought to the pool. He said the
routines she had been doing seemed antiquated. He asked for six months.
If she didn't feel she was progressing after that, she could go to
someone else.
The six months became three years and marriage. Smith said her diet was
changed and her approach was changed, more event-level training instead
of simple mileage in the pool. She worked more. She rested more. No
longer a student, she could now be a full-time athlete. "No one works as
hard as she does," Brian says. "Let me tell you about her wedding day.
She trained for two hours in the morning. She came home, got married,
had a bite to eat, then went back to the pool for two more hours. Came
home again. Bite to eat. Bed. She wouldn't take a day off for her
wedding."
The day—June 11—was too close to the Olympics.
Van Dyken, here en route to victory in the 100 fly, won four gold
medals for "all the nerds out there."
photograph by
"The biggest medal was the first one," Michelle says. "To win that
medal, to stand on the podium with the national anthem, that was what I
always had dreamed about. That was the one I wanted. The rest were
extra."
She was a constant in a meet that had a load of constants. U.S. relay
teams were constants, Americans taking all six relays, including a
world-record 3:34.84 in the men's 4x100 medley relay. Amy Van Dyken of
the U.S. was a constant, with four wins, two in relays plus individual
victories in the 50 free and the 100 butterfly. She became the first
American woman in history to win four gold medals in one Olympics. Van
Dyken, who in high school was teased because she was six feet tall, said
she won for "all the nerds out there." The U.S., overall, had a much
stronger meet than expected, taking 26 medals, 13 gold. "I think what
you've witnessed here is a perfect example of what it means for a team
to pull together and really take charge," U.S. sprinter Gary Hall Jr.
said after anchoring that 4x100 medley relay in the final event of the
meet.
Americans were everywhere. Janet Evans might have ended her Olympic
career on a down note, finishing out of the money in both the 400 and
the 800 frees, but 16-year-old Brooke Bennett took Evans's old place on
the 800 medal stand to become the distance queen. Fifteen-year-old Beth
Botsford won the 100 backstroke, 25-year-old teammate Whitney Hedgepeth
finishing second (then adding another silver in the 200 backstroke).
xxx
Brad Bridgewater won the men's 200 backstroke, with Tripp Schwenk
second. Everywhere. Sprinter Angel Martino earned four medals, two
bronze individual medals and two relay golds. Jenny Thompson finished
with three relay gold medals, to give her five over two Olympics, tying
Bonnie Blair for the most golds by a U.S. woman.
China, which figured to win as many as eight golds in Atlanta, was a
constant in retreat, winning only one event and amassing only six
medals. New Zealand's Danyon Loader was a constant, taking the 200 and
400 free. Russian sprinter extraordinaire Aleksandr Popov was a
constant, beating Hall by an eyelash in both the 50 and 100 frees, races
he had also won in Barcelona. South Africa's breaststroker Penelope
Heyns was a constant, taking both the 100 and 200. The crowds at the
Aquatic Center also were a constant, 15,000-seat sellouts every night
for seven nights, raucous cheers and star-spangled flag-waving for every
American who moved to the starting line.
By the time the final night arrived, however, another set of colors had
been added to the picture. Green, white and orange. The Irish had
arrived. "I watched the first race at home, in a pub in Dublin," Sarah
Smith said. "Everybody was throwing champagne everywhere until four
o'clock in the morning. The second race I watched in a TV studio in
Dublin because they asked me to come. The third race and the fourth ...
here. Dunnes Stores sent all the rest of us over. They did a deal with
Michelle. My other sister, my brother, myself, my aunt, maybe about 10
of us. And I heard that 400 more people came along, paid their own way.
Just to be here for the end."
The end, last Friday night, was the bronze in the 200 fly. Had she won,
Michelle would have been only the third swimmer, after Mark Spitz in
1972 and Kristin Otto in '88, to win four individual gold medals in one
Games. She failed in a distracted way: the strap to her goggles breaking
before the race, her rushing as she tried to find a second set, then
borrowing a pair from a Dutch swimmer. Everything happened in a hurry,
but not an unhappy hurry.
"I found myself crying on the podium," Michelle said afterward. "I said
to myself, Why am I doing this? Am I sad because I didn't win another
gold? I realized that wasn't it at all. I was crying because I was so
happy. This was the greatest week of my life."
The Irish version. There was good beer and good conversation. The
Guinness people had rented the second floor of the DeKalb County
courthouse in nearby Decatur and named it Irish House. This was where
the celebration was held.
A portrait of some former local official looked down from a stately wall
at all these visitors speaking in a brogue. Michelle and Erik weren't
there—offers of endorsements and other business opportunities were
arriving in bulk, demands everywhere—but the family was there. The
friends were there.
Sarah was saying how "mischievous" her sister was, always the practical
joker. Patricia was saying how she and Brian always had to be in bed by
nine, simply to take their daughters to swimming practice. Brian was
saying, well, Brian was saying that he was the one person who had
predicted this. Not to worry. He said he had seen the progress over
three years, seen it daily. Drugs? Not a chance. "I was always a big one
to talk about the East Germans and the Chinese," he said. "What they did
really bothered me. If Michelle had taken drugs, I couldn't walk outside
the house, couldn't look people in the eye. Michelle, too. She couldn't
look people in the eye. We couldn't face people."
There was a better rumor—a strong rumor—that a national
holiday was going to be called for the day Michelle returned to Dublin.
What would that be like? There could be a holiday for a swimmer.
Roll over, W.B. Yeats. Tell James Joyce the news.
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