From Weekend 1
beaten again.
She laughs when that story comes up: "But it's true. I really wanted to win. No messing. I'm like that in everything." Said her father Brian: "She said to me at 10, `I'm going to the Olympics'. Yeah, we did laugh but I believed it. I used to say when we'd see a flag coming up in the Olympics, `wouldn't it be fantastic if one day we had the flag coming up for an Irish swimmer'. " Who knows if that was the fire that entered her belly, but by the age of 12, she and four other squad members had won a silver medal in the British championships, the first time for an Irish junior team to do so.
AT 14, she had donned 11 gold medals at the National Championships in Galway. At 15, her daily training schedule entailed two hours in the pool before school and an hour and a half afterwards.
At 16, she picked up nine honours in her Inter Cert and at 17, she had a sporting CV that would stretch the length of a 50 metre pool (if we had one) which included 33 Irish swimming records, senior and junior.
At 18, she missed a place in the B final of the 1988 Olympics by a tenth of a second and at 19 she walked away with six honours in her Leaving Cert (taken entirely as Gaeilge). At 22 she ploughed yet again into that heartbreak arena, this time in Barcelona, having suffered a back injury in Florida severe enough to kill her ability to do any tumble turns within four weeks of the Olympics.
"No, I'm not sorry I went, not only because I met Erik there, but also because it was really a fantastic honour to be chosen by the Olympic Council to carry the flag - the first Irishwoman," she said.
The questions being asked in the past week make one wonder. The fact is that her depth of ambition, independence, intelligence and mental strength in a woman often don't sit well with others. Phil Hansell might be a case in point. A scholarship to the University of Houston presented the opportunity to work with Mr Hansell, America's Olympic coach. He was in charge of swimming at the university where Smith studied for her communications degree.
"She was not too receptive a swim pupil in that she tended to question almost every thing I had to say," Hansell recalls. If his tone sounds a bit waspish, it may be that he wasn't feeling too well at the time. As Michelle was heading into her third year studies, the poor man had to undergo a triple bypass. After four months without a swimming coach, she upped and left, tossing aside her chances of a degree.
"I knew I had X amount of swimming talent. I was in a programme with no coach, no one directing the team and I thought, if I stay here for a year and a half, I'll just waste that time and I didn't ever want to have to say what if As for her relationship with her elders and betters in the IASA ... Never mind the small matter of a missing 50 metre swimming pool, it appears Michelle Smith and the association were never soul mates.
Gagged by a signed code of conduct that forbids national swimmers to criticise the IASA in public, she was measured in her on the record comments to The Irish Times last year; she still needed them in order to be selected for the championships. But Gary O'Toole, European silver medallist (and lately a medical doctor), has no such reservations. He bristles with contempt: "The IASA ... The Irish Amateur Swimming Association. Their very title actually sums up that association and ifs approach completely. They didn't purposely hamper her progress but they would have liked her to progress along their own lines, to follow their plan. They just wanted to keep her in line.
"When they felt she was getting too big, they constantly reminded her that she wasn't bigger than the sport and were always at pains to point out to her that she needed them.
"Their stance on Hong Kong was the showdown. They wanted her to be a part of their system and basically to be beholden to the IASA for where she'd got. But she's beholden to no one but Erik. She did it all on her own."
The IASA would have funded trips that conformed to their plan, trips such as the Scottish or Welsh nationals but they were no good to her: "The people I need to compete against just wouldn't be there, they're above that level. I needed a different plan, because of my level and because I don't live and train in Ireland." Simple really. In their house, Erik said in his characteristically concise way: "The IASA is amateur; Michelle is a professional. That is the difference."
"Well that is the difference," replies Celia Millane of the IASA "Michelle is professional and we are amateur, she probably gets more money than us.
"In the particular instance of Hong Kong we decided against sending a team because it was so very expensive but we did travel to other World Cup events in Europe. Then when Michelle looked for £700 to go herself, all of our funds were committed because we have to work all of that out well in advance. It probably would have been different this year because we got quite a lot of money but we don't control how much money we get."
AND you thought all she lacked was a 50 metre pool? The point is that Michelle Smith is The Right Stuff. How many of us could endure 15 years of all out graft, sweat and tears for what is, after all, just a sport? Who would forsake a normal social life for all that time (she was 23 when she first met Erik, her first serious boy friend), walk away from a degree, suffer the soul killing jokes about Irish swimming, choose exile from homeland and family and live on a pittance - only to wind up at 26, a has been, it seemed, in the eyes of the swimming world, in a place like Hardinxveld?
Let the experts debate her amazing six beat leg kicks (which, by the way, she can maintain from the first metre to the 400th, says Gary O'Toole); leave it to them to dissect her muscle tone, stroke technique or strategy. Ignore the fact that Janet Evans's spiteful words were mere soundbites in an hour long interview or that Evans herself had predicted, days before our girl dipped a toe in a Georgian pool, that it would be a major surprise if the US swimming team won a single gold between them.
Just look at Smith the woman. Look at her calm, smiling, velvet smooth progress through Atlanta and consider that deep inside that steely discipline must have lurked the raw nerves of Everyman, the dreaded knowledge that even for the strongest, best prepared athletes, things can go disastrously wrong.
You can only plan so far. As Smith herself told The Irish Times: "You just never know what's going to happen on the day. I could have gone out there and been in the best shape of my life but what happens if I dive in and my goggles fill up with water? It's like being on a running track and losing a shoe - you can dive in and lose your goggles or come to the end of the pool and your feet slip off the wall.
Even then, she had her eyes firmly fixed on Atlanta. "Oh yes, there's still room for improvement. I'm planning for a year and a half. I wouldn't make any plans further than that." And why would she, hurtling towards an event that she knew in her absolute, dogged self belief would change her life? She doesn't like talking about herself, protesting that she's "nothing special, just ... normal". Incredulous glances all round. "Well, I suppose not normal. You have to be a bit of a lunatic to get up at five in the morning and go swimming for two and a half hours and then go training in the gym for two hours and back again to the pool in the afternoon for two hours. I suppose that's not normal."
BUT that's all of a year and a half ago, a lifetime away. Is she a woman who can keep her feet on the ground in all eventualities? "I'd like to think that I can. Erik helps me with that too. He's used to it, he's been at the top of the discus world now for quite a few years and has had to deal with all that publicity and interviews and stuff. So he was able to say make sure you keep your feet on the ground, don't let it get to you, don't let it distract from your training or from the reasons that got you to where you are now. Stick to, your schedule - it's the only way to do it".
Stick to your schedule ... Michelle Smith has been sticking to it now for, oh, 16 years or more. With the granite carved Erik beside her, chances are that the schedule will be twice as sacred. And the same Erik should be our best riposte to allegations that our golden girl would ever risk drug abuse and its resulting long term physical ravages for the sake of sporting success. For what loving husband - even if he is also her coach - could tolerate such an injury to his own wife?