The power and the glory

PICTURES and sounds. Tricolours. Tears. Cupia focail o Sean Ban. Can can lines of cheering journalists. Michelle Smith's clenched fist raised up but of the churning blue water, as if bestowing the sword of Excalibar on Irish womanhood. The perfect sports story.

More. A none too subtle twist of partisan rivalry has been added to the cocktail. Janet Evans has obligingly played the role of the ugly American, allowing us to become red faced and defensive about the extraordinary events of the past week.

What has all the fuss been about? Has it been about ungracious Americans who can't take their licking? Has it been about a big country doing down a little country? Has it been about Irish journalists lining up with pompoms and twirly sticks to do cheerleading routines at press conferences.

No. This past week, beyond the glory and the images of glory, beyond Bill Clinton and Mary Robinson, this past week in the pool has been about an extraordinary improvement in one woman's performances at a time of life when such quantum leaps seemed out of the question. What Michelle Smith has done is to completely mutate the body of physiological and bio mechanical science surrounding women's swimming.

Picture this. If Michelle Smith trailed home all week beaten by a phenomenon as unique and surprising as herself, we would ask the questions coldly, stridently and curiously. Then we would decide whether or not to grant our trust.

If we are to be journalists and not cheerleaders with typewriters we must pause to listen to the questions. If we are to be lovers of sport and not mere worshippers of success we must ask for answers. If we are to cherish Michelle Smith as a true hero we mustn't do her the injustice of demeaning her by means of whispered innuendo. Her achievements have been of such a magnitude these past seven days that they almost defy comprehension. The further you delve into the science of swimming the more unusual all that gold seems. It was right that the questions should have been amplified and not whispered.

The questions have been asked, not just by Americans, but by all those interested in the sport. It wasn't an American who asked one week ago tonight if she could explain her sudden explosion at 26". Nor was it just Americans from whom Erik de Bruin stormed away that same evening when asked about his own experience with illegal substances. Nor on Monday night, beneath the chorus of cheerleading, was it solely American voices who sought answers at a fraught press conference. Irish journalists were among those asking the hard questions.

Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that the American media hasn't been nearly as ugly, racist or partisan this week as their Irish counterparts in the wake of Sonia O'Sullivan's troubles at the hands of the Chinese in Stuttgart three years ago. The US media asked questions of Chinese swimmers. They asked questions of Flo Jo. They ask questions of Frankie Fredericks. Where there is an aberration in improvement curves they ask questions. What's wrong with that?

That questions are asked is absolutely no proof of guilt. That they need to be asked at all reflects on the scale of achievement and the failings of sports administrators.

Let's not kid ourselves. The Americans have had a week of almost constant celebration in the pool. Irish success is good news here. The perfect sports stories always beg questions, though.

Michelle Smith's performances have been astonishing. She herself has recognised that the questions which have been asked have to be asked. That is the horrible cleft of modern sport.

There is no absolute proof of either innocence or guilt.

Pharmacology has galloped years ahead of testing procedures and even those quaint phials of urine being ferried around Atlanta this week will scarcely withstand a sustained legal challenge by an athlete at whom the finger is pointed.

Michelle Smith will point to the 11 drug tests performed on her in the past 12 months and those within sport will know that human growth hormones or erythropoetin can never show up in those tests, that the failings of sports authorities have left acres of room for innuendo and inference and rumour mongering.

We have to take athletes on trust. To defend Michelle Smith is a reflex.

She is one of our own. She only became a serious full time athlete three years ago. She just lost weight and gained upper body strength. She improved her technique. Bulked up on carbohydrates and protein. She went and trained in the flume, analysed her speeds and her strokes. By the next Olympics, perhaps, all female swimming medal winners will be her age.

Erik de Bruin's failed test and subsequent appeal can't be boiled down to the clumsy shorthand of innuendo and can't be permitted to taint someone he loves by mere association. Furthermore, just because Erik and Michelle were occasionally poor at handling the media prior to the Games doesn't mean that they don't deserve trust.

Yet, all the factors the age profile, the mediocre career, the huge improvements, the coach who knew nothing about swimming, the faint taint of association all those things make questions inevitable.

Michelle Smith's performance in knocking 19 seconds off her own personal best time in the space of 15 months in the 400 metres freestyle for instance is worth looking of in the context of the world record progression in that event.

In 1970, in Los Angeles, Debbie Meyer of the USA swam 4:24.3 for a new world record in the 400 metres freestyle. Six years later, Barbara Krause of East Germany took the time down to 4:11.69. In the same city, in 1978, Tracey Wickhan of Australia made another leap with a swim of 4:06.28. With the historic swim of a 17 year old, Janet Evans, in Seoul, 1988, the time eventually fell to 4:03.85, the current outer limit of achievement in the event. It took 12 years for the best international swimmers in the world to pare eight seconds off the world record.

In 26 years, the greatest swimmers in the world have taken the mark down 20.45 seconds.

Michelle Smith lopped 18.93 seconds off her personal best in the space of 15 months without even specialising in the event. She swam a national record of 4:26.18 on April 1st, 1995, almost three years into her current training regimen. Then, this summer, in Fort Lauderdale, she astonished the world by turning in a 4:08 time out of the blue, having been encouraged to try the event by a good 200 metres freestyle swim in the Dutch national championships in June.

"Straight after the Dutch championships, Erik said to me that I was fit enough to try a 400 metres freestyle. We looked everywhere for one and found a race in Fort Lauderdale on July 7th.

On Monday night, she equalled Mark Spitz's 1968 men's 400 metres freestyle record and swam 50 seconds better than Johnny Weismuller's 1923 record set in New Haven. Fifty seconds better than Tarzan. It's trivia perhaps, but jarring.

In the context also of a week of competition, the level of exertion and achievement has been a quantum leap on anything otherwise achieved.

In 1988, 22 year old, 6ft Kristin Otto won four individual swim gold medals, an achievement which was considered remarkable at the time. Her successes came in 100 metres and 50 metres sprint events. Cumulatively, she raced 700 metres in individual heats and finals, plus another 200 metres in relay events. Nine hundred metres of competitive swimming in all to become a legend of the pool.

In 1994, incidentally, after the fall of the eastern block, declassified documents revealed Otto to have been fed a life time diet of testosterone and other performance enhancing drugs.

This week, Michelle Smith swam 2,400 metres worth of top class racing, breaking personal bests and leaving behind times which rank amongst the top 10 in history in several events. Any wonder that the pool deck has been gape mouthed.

It has been stated that her European championship performances last summer should have served as ample warning for competitors.

Yet Smith's times in Vienna last year, achieved in the absence of the great swimming powers of China, Australia and the US would have placed her among the alsoswams in Atlanta. The surprise this week has been the sight of a 26 year old breaking personal best times by more than a second (more than three seconds in the 400 IM) in a succession of events.

Make no mistake, 26 is old for a champion female swimmer, an extraordinary mutation in the historical pattern. The last 10 Olympic 400 metres freestyle champions, for instance, have ranged in age from 15 (Shane Gould and Petra Thurner) to 22 (Dagmar Hase) and have had an average age of 16.9 years. Michelle Smith will be 27 this winter.

The physiological argument runs that the gains which can be made in a change of training styles and body shape should be offset at such a time in life by the increased water resistance of the mature female body and the levelling out of potential.

In a sport where times and improvements are measured in such fractions that the removal of body hair is considered a routine essential, the question of physiology is a moot one. Besides, being older than almost all her rivals, Michelle Smith is also smaller and in many cases heavier. She doesn't enjoy the advantages of reach bestowed for instance on the 5'10" world champion Yan Chen. When you look for a nickname for her, "The Albatross" doesn't come to mind.

Instead, Michelle Smith has packed astonishing power into her upper body.

The power and sheer aerobic physiological fitness can't but impress the onlooker. In a week of stress and hard competitive swimming her body has recovered faster than anyone of else's, suggesting extraordinary levels cardio respiratory fitness and a remarkable durability in the musculo sketetal tissues. Again, this has been acquired late in her career.

The aggressive approach to racing has been a factor, too. The confidently aggressive approach, fostered by the "us against the world" mentality of herself and Erik de Bruin, has given a certain mental edge.

It is the physiologists and not the sports psychologists who remain most fascinated, however.

Jay T Kearney, head sports physiologist at the US Olympic centre in Colorado, has no axe to grind concerning Michelle Smith's achievements, yet confesses that they run against the grain of what he has come to expect.

"If you examine the rate of development of records across age groups, especially in females, they are very, very flat after the age of about 17 or 15. Physiologically, with Michelle Smith, I don't know precisely where she was three or four years ago, or when she should have been peaking, but to make the physiological adaptation necessary to improve that much competitively, well, just like everyone else, I would have to say that it would be unusual to accomplish that much in that length of time.

"If having already competed in two Games she has radically changed her training programme and diets and factors like that, even then these would be truly exceptional gains.

"For instance, our oldest ever female gold medal winner in swimming is 29 years old. She would have a completely different career profile, however.

Indeed Angel Martino was winning gold in the Goodwill Games some 10 years ago. Interestingly, also in terms of the way the American media has been portrayed this week, she is seldom allowed to forget a positive drugs test in 1988 which kept her off the US Olympic team. In terms of associative guilt, it is often dropped into profiles of her that her husband, Mike, is a biochemist.

Angel was getting on with it this week, winning golds and being charming. Like several other Americans she went out of her way to praise Michelle Smith's achievements and express some solidarity as Smith faced down the innuendo.

Michelle Smith has turned a sport on its head in the space of seven days. She has turned a modest career into something glittering and golden, altered a nation's mood and perhaps pushed back the barriers of female physiology. A life time at the nation's bosom lies ahead. The choice of commercial endorsements are spread at her feet like rose petals. This weekend Sunday papers are rumoured to be offering £20,000 minimum for the rights to her story.

Her achievements have been remarkable. The rewards both material and spiritual will be immense. Answering a few questions as to how it all came to be was a small toll to pay. Some would say it brought out the best in her and the worst in the rest of us.