Time to tackle tainted legacy

As Michelle Smith de Bruin settles into the second full day of her retirement from swimming the sport she left behind is struggling to come to terms with her legacy.

It was unclear yesterday as to whether or not de Bruin's medals from the 1997 European Championships in Seville could be taken back from the swimmer. Opinion from LEN, the swimming body responsible for that competition, suggested not.

Meanwhile Irish swimming officials will be looking at the raft of over 30 Irish women's records which de Bruin leaves behind. The disgraced champion still owns virtually every Irish women's record except those in the freestyle category.

These records include the most startling and literally incredible improvements ever made by a mature female swimmer. Having retired after the Barcelona Olympics, applying unsuccessfully for the vacant post of director of swimming with the Irish Amateur Swimming Association, de bruin returned to the pool in late 1993 and proceeded to break 23 Irish records in the space of 12 months.

Those records which stand as a ceiling to the ambitions of future generations of young swimmers are worth recalling. De Bruin knocked 4.74 seconds off the Irish short-course record for the 200 metres individual medley in February 1994. In the four months up to March 1994 she lopped over 10 seconds off her best short-course time in the 400 IM. By December the following year she had taken a staggering 8.6 seconds off her long-course record for the same event.

These times were achieved by a mature swimmer already four or five years past the time when female swimmers are, for physiological reasons, at their best.

The best was yet to come, however. The 400 metres freestyle, one of the pure strength events on the pool schedule, was never one of de Bruin's disciplines. The 400 metres individual medley provided more unlikely results. In 1992 her best time when retiring was 4:58:94. By end of 1995 that was down to 4:42:81. By the time Atlanta closed for business she was down to 4:39:18. The swimming world had never seen anything like it.

It was the 400 metres freestyle which was to throw up the greatest improvement and most daunting record of the de Bruin era. A brief look at the history of the event is worthwhile. In 1970 in Los Angeles Debbie Meyer of the US swam 4:23:3 to establish a new world record in the event. Eighteen years later, a waif-like Janet Evans won the Seoul Olympics and took the time down 4:03:85, a mark which remains the outer limit of achievement in the event. In 29 years, in other words, the 400 metres freestyle record has dwindled by 20.45 seconds Michelle de Bruin knew no such aching progress. She whipped 18.93 seconds off her own personal best in the event without even specialising in freestyle. On April 1st 1995 in Holland, she swam 4:26:18. In Pine Crest the following summer in a time trial which has since been scrubbed from the records because of the irregularities surrounding it, de Bruin swam 4:08. Weeks later at the Olympics in Atlanta she knocked a further second off this time (4:07:25) while visibly pulling up over the last 30 metres. The average age of the previous 10 gold medallists in the event was 16.9 years. De Bruin was 26, 5ft 3in and coming off a career's worth of heroic hard work and modest reward. Only a nation as broadly ignorant of the science of swimming as we Irish were could have swallowed it all without question.

Whatever about the debate over whether or not Michelle de Bruin is morally entitled to the medals she won in Atlanta, it seems unlikely that she will feel obliged to return them and impossible for the IOC to request that she does so. They are a worthless part of history and as Marianne Limpart, one of the unfortunate silver medalists, has commented, her silver has become part of what she is.

More important and relevant are the records set by de Bruin since hooking up with her husband and coach, Erik. Officially, only one of these was set in the period in which we know for sure that Michelle de Bruin was using androstenodione.

However Irish swimming must face up to a future where it must explain to its brightest and best that the targets they are set in the form of Irish records were established by a woman who was later banned for doping offences and who was trained by a shot-putter who was at the time serving a four-year ban after a positive drugs test. Irish swimming must look into those bright young faces and say that yes Irish swimming accepts those records as valid. Then it must educate the same kids about the value of clean sport.

Yesterday, Minister for Sport Jim McDaid raised the issue of the records left behind in Ireland's greatest sports scandal. "It is for the new body which I have set up, Swim Ireland, to have a look at those. They are starting off from scratch and it is for them to make a decision. It is another problem for them to face up to."

Sean Gordon, the honorary recorder for Irish swimming for much of the time during which de Bruin was setting new records, has been an outspoken critic of the swimmer since before Atlanta and has openly expressed doubts about the integrity of the records which he was asked to record.

Gordon has already asked the former IASA to scrub the 400 metres freestyle time set by de Bruin in Pine Crest in 1996. The time has already been scrubbed by the Florida Gold Coast swimming authorities.

Gordon wrote to the IASA last year when charges against de Bruin were made and asked for any documentation relating to her case to be made available to him as honorary recorder. This was not forthcoming.

"I would certainly think that given the hard cold facts as we know them now that those in charge of Irish swimming will be looking at what they are passing on to the next generation of female swimmers," said Gordon yesterday. "This was an issue which nobody in Irish swimming would touch for years. Now is the time to make some amends."