US objection rouses Irish ire

THE Irish party were in no mood to accept US led objections to Smith's participation in the 400 freestyle and led by OCI president Pat Hickey, they successfully ensured her involvement in the early hours of yesterday morning.

As the attempt to block Smith's entry in the event was thrown out by an independent arbitration panel (consisting of lawyers from Canada, France and Switzerland), Hickey rounded on the Americans and accused them of "jealousy".

"There is absolutely no question about it, the Americans are jealous at us for beating them for gold medals," Hickey said. Hickey accompanied by OCI honorary secretary Dermot Sherlock and swimming team manager Bobby Madine, was summoned, at an hour's notice, to a 3.0 a.m. (Atlanta time) to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) just seven hours before Smith competed in her heat.

The US Swimming Association were joined in their late appeal by the swimming federations of Germany and the Netherlands. Amazingly, no representatives of the national Olympic committees from any of the three countries were present, and Germany had no one at all in attendance. After a two hour meeting, Smith was given the all clear to compete.

"I think the Americans played very, very dirty pool on this issue, they were extremely vicious at the meeting," said Hickey, "and at all costs wanted to take our athlete from the Games.

"The IOC, thank God, took a great decision, that the Games are here for the best athletes to participate in and the Sports Director of the IOC mentioned the fact that if people were not flexible and allowed for breakdowns ill rule changes for example, the ACOG made the mistake on this issue that perhaps 2,000 athletes wouldn't have made the Games.

"It was very, very vicious for the Americans to seize on a small country like Ireland, the only country in Europe without a 50 metre pool and, yet, the Americans wanted to do us in," he said.

Hickey was also amazed that the American swimming federation who have no authority to make an appeal went ahead and made the appeal against Smith's participation without the knowledge of their Olympic Council. In such circumstances, the latest appeal was doomed to failure. No less a power than IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch had, over the weekend given Smith the go ahead to compete.