MICHELLE SMITH will swim competitively in Ireland for the first time in two years at next month's Leisureland international short course meet in Salthill.

The triple Olympic gold medalist confirmed yesterday that she is prepared to interrupt her European championship training schedule, en route to Seville in August, to compete on at least two days at the Galway venue.

The Leisureland event (February 28th-March 2nd) is now in it's fourth year and is gaining in status as a stopping off point for quality swimmers. Smith competed there prior to her European championship success of 1995.

Any notion of the event being eventually accepted as a World Cup short course gala is destined to remain ill conceived ahead of possible reconstruction work to transform the pool from six lanes to the standard eight. There would also be the need for a suitable swim down pool before any application for World Cup status could be considered.

The organisers have, and continue to be brave even to contemplate the excellent Leisureland gala without the support of a major sponsor. Since Atlanta and Michelle Smith's performances one would not have foreseen any more difficulty in this area but IASA secretary Celia Millane said: "Staged with financial support from the Minister for Sport the Leisureland Board and locals, the event is still without a major sponsor and further funds have still to be raised to meet the targets.

A major share of these funds will be necessary to reimburse competitors. Already the line up includes swimmers from the US Olympic squad (no mention of Janet Evans), Germany, Sweden Holland and Britain. The full line up will not be known until after the closing date for entries next month.

Smith yesterday took a morning off from training and spent some of the time distancing herself from comments attributed to her by the American Swimming World magazine which claims that: "Smith is wrong in arguing that suspicions and charges of doping are motivated by nationalism, jealousy, anti Irish feelings or disappointment that Janet Evans was knocked out of the final by Smith."

Smith said: "I didn't say that. What I am saying is that there's a lot of frustration at the moment in US swimming because they've lost their stranglehold on world swimming in the last seven or eight years and they made specific plans four years ago as to how they would do better at the 1996 Olympics. Basically a couple of their swimmers who won gold did well but didn't perform to the best of their ability."

Smith analyses any disappointing Olympic performances by American swimmers thus: "A lot of the American coaches are coaching in college teams for 15 to 25 years and they are coaching the same way as they did 20 years ago while a lot of the rest of the world are moving forward in terms of their training, and in terms of the way they live their lives, the way they eat the way they rest. A lot of the smaller countries are now coming forward because their training methods are simply becoming more advanced."

Smith continued: "Some of the swimmers I swam against were not able to match the same times that they had swum in the American trials four or five months previously. So, they can't blame that on anyone else except themselves.

Asked to comment on this curious drop and if it could be drug related Smith says: "I wouldn't accuse anybody of taking drugs unless they are actually tested positive. No, it's definitely not the thing to do."

The big events this weekend are the Coca Cola Open at Newtownards (on Saturday) the Sjaellands Open in Denmark, also on Saturday and the Geneva International (on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.)