MICHELLE SMITH celebrated her return to long-course competition with a glittering medal haul at the prestigious international European League swim meet in Toulouse at the weekend.

Two gold medals (100 metres butterfly and 200 metres individual medley), one silver (400 individual medley) and a new Irish record in the 200 metres back-stroke - an event she uses these days for little more than warm-up purposes - was a reassuring start to the year for Smith in the build-up to Atlanta.

Smith was hailed as the most successful competitor at the meet, in which some of the anticipated stars at this summer's Olympics, were taking part. "I am really delighted with results like these coming at the heart of a hard training programme that entails 100,000 metres a week. I really only came here to sample 50-metre competition for the first time in seven months," said Smith.

There was additional satisfaction for the Dublin woman when she reversed yesterday morning's outcome in the 200 metres butterfly by beating her great French rival from the World Cup series, Cecile Jeanson, in the afternoon's 100 metres butterfly in 1:02.15 seconds.

"The good thing about it is that I am swimming faster at this stage than I was in the build-up to the European championships last August," says Smith.

Later she went on to win the 200 metres individual medley in style in 2:17.6 seconds. This compares favourably, at this stage of preparation, with her record time in Vienna (2:15.27).

For the record, her backstroke time at 200 metres which realised fourth place resulted in a new Irish record time of 2:1 7.96 seconds.

At the outset of the meet on Saturday, Smith was - not surprisingly - content to be 10 seconds adrift of her 400 metres IM time (4:52.00) when finishing second to the Dane, Britte Vestergaard.