AT the inaugural Youth Olympics in Moscow last week the world champion sprinter, Emily Maher, came face to face with the seamier side of international sport. The Olympic village was teeming with young athletes who, like the Kilkenny teenager, had dreams of a place on the podium. Unlike Maher, some were banking on doing so with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs.
"I couldn't believe it," she says, sipping water in her coach's house in Kilkenny. "I was in the village and I saw two athletes my age going up to security guards and asking where they could find drugs. Someone reported them afterwards. It was incredible."
Incredible or not, Maher (17), who returned triumphant from Moscow with two gold medals for the 100m and 200m, is not naive enough to believe that the phenomenon of drugs at top levels in sport does not exist.
The fact that many past sporting heroes - "I still really admire Ben Johnson," she says - broke the rules to get to the top is the stuff of grim reality. Asked whether it is possible to excel at her chosen discipline in the future without resorting to similar tactics, Maher is unequivocal.
"I believe that natural talent is what you need to win. If you don't have natural ability you won't win. I plan to make it without taking drugs," says Maher, who is a firm supporter of Michelle de Bruin.
Despite her impressive maturity - she says she has "no opinion" on the row that broke out over lack of Government funding for sport in the wake of her victories - Emily Maher is still just a teenager. Her conversation slips from the doping tests she underwent after winning each race ("I didn't find it degrading") to Gucci and Calvin Klein ("I'm total fashion victim").
Her coach, Robert Norwood, teases her about all the media attention that has followed her wins and the calls she gets on the odd occasion her mother, Frances, puts the constantly buzzing phone back on the hook.
"Mmmm . . . ProActive rang. They want to manage me, I don't know if I need a manager but I'll have a chat," she says, laughing. A representative of U2's management company is also understood to have been making inquiries. "I don't know what they want," she grins. "I'm tone-deaf."
Emily Maher's grin is huge. She wears a functional tracksuit and gold nail varnish. You think of the medals and realise it is only to be expected that this fashion victim has excellent co-ordination skills.
THE scenes when she returned from Moscow to her home village of Hugginstown were of a community bursting with pride at the achievements of one of their own. But even before the medals Maher was something of a local celebrity.
At seven and a member of Thomastown Athletic Club she ran her way to Kilkenny's first gold medal in a community games. She had been nervous about that race, worried she might get lost among the crowd, and remembers her sister shoving her on to the starting line. "She said, `Run or you are not coming home'," Maher recalls. "So I ran. My Mum ran alongside me for some of the way."
Frances Maher is currently recuperating after an exhausting week of celebrations but is ever-present in her daughter's conversation.
Maher, who now runs with Kilkenny City Harriers, says her mother is the one who encourages her, drives her to races all over the country, feeds her the right foods, gets her to bed early. Her parents, a sporty couple, separated when she was quite young. "I am really close to my Mum, my whole family supports me, they are brilliant," she says.
When she talks about athletics her serious brown eyes sparkle. "I love everything about it, winning races, meeting new people, the training, the travelling," she says. She met her boyfriend, athlete Paul Opperman, through running. One of her best friends is Fiona Norwood, her coach's daughter and an Irish junior hurdling champion.
If it weren't for the facilities in the Kilkenny area, says Norwood, Maher would not be a world champion. "There are some fabulous up-and-coming athletes in Ireland but after they leave school there is nothing to keep them interested. It is hard to become a world-beater without going to America," he says.
And the American collegiate system seems the obvious destination for Maher when she completes her Leaving Certificate next year. She has had a few offers. Florida State University seems a distinct possibility.
At the European Junior Championships in France next week there will be a certain pressure to perform. Pressure from "armchair athletes", says Norwood. "People who don't know what they are talking about." Maher is hoping for nothing more satisfying than a personal best in France and Sydney 2000 does not rank high in her long-term plans. She is likely to make her next real Olympic challenge in 2004.
Recalling the final seconds before she took off on her 100m flight to victory last week Emily Maher reveals a steely determination that will help her in France and wherever else her athletic career takes her: "On the line I was going to win it. And when I did win it I wanted my second gold medal. Off track my competitors may also be my friends but on the track I detest them. Whoever I am running against my main thought is, `I'm gonna kick your ass'."
