Gold Medalist Back in Hot Water

‘I don’t want to have to go through another year like the one just gone by,” Olympic swimming champion Michelle Smith wrote last year in the Independent, an Irish newspaper.

“Sure, it’s been fun being an Olympic champion but it’s been tough too, especially having to constantly battle against all the drug allegations.”

As Smith now knows, that sentiment was nothing but wide-eyed wishful thinking.

At this pace, 1998 is going to make 1997 look like a splash in a wading pool for Smith.

Last week, the head of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission announced that a urine sample taken from Smith in January contained levels of alcohol so high it should have killed her, indicating that sample had been tampered with.

“The alcohol level was so high that you could not survive with the concentration,” IOC medical commission chairman Prince Alexandre de Merode told reporters in Sydney, Australia, where the IOC executive board was meeting last week.

“That’s strange. That normally indicates manipulation.”

Smith’s sample was taken at an unannounced out-of-competition test Jan. 10. At the same time, half a world away at the World Championships in Perth, the Chinese swim team found itself besieged by drug scandals, including the airport arrest of swimmer Yuan Yuan for trying to smuggle human-growth hormone into the country.

According to the report issued by the IOC-accredited drug laboratory in Barcelona, Smith’s sample showed “unequivocal signs of adulteration”--indicating that the alcohol might have been used to mask the presence of banned performance-enhancing drugs.

FINA, the international governing body of swimming, has threatened Smith with a lifetime ban if she is found guilty of tampering with the sample. The IOC’s de Merode said he would recommend a two-year ban if Smith is found guilty, but added, “this is not a matter for the IOC. It is an international federation matter and they are free to do what they want.”

Smith has been hounded by suspicion and innuendo ever since she turned a long career of mediocrity into three gold medals and a bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Before 1995, Smith had never qualified for an international long-course final, but in 1996, at the advanced age of 26, she won Olympic gold medals in the 200- and 400-meter medleys and 400-meter freestyle, along with a bronze in the 200-meter butterfly.

She spent much of 1997 refuting allegations of doping--allegations that were never proven--while receiving a warning from FINA after failing to undergo a drug test in late 1996.

At a news conference in Dublin on Wednesday, Smith said she was innocent of the latest charges.

“I am appalled at the manner in which they have been leaked into the public domain,” she said. “I intend fully defending [myself], if necessary, all the way to the international sports court in Switzerland.”

SWIMMING THROUGH MURKY WATERS

Smith also said she intends to continue competitive swimming in the interim. Easier said than done, she discovered Friday at a meet in Sarcelles, France.

Smith won a 100-meter freestyle heat in 57.64 seconds, climbed out of the pool and was immediately engulfed by photographers, TV cameramen and reporters. Meet officials had to escort her through the throng and away from the pool.

Saying she was acting on the advice of her attorney, Smith declined all interview requests and answered no questions.

FINA secretary Gunnar Werner said Smith is scheduled to undergo another urine test May 18.

Brian Smith, Michelle’s father, told Irish radio that the controversy is “making our lives quite unbearable.” He added, “The people of Ireland can rest assured that Michelle is now the victim of a series of mistakes by certain people of FINA. . . . There is still no evidence against Michelle.”

NEVER PROMISED HER THE ROSE GARDEN

Life lessons to be gleaned from the U.S. Olympic team’s post-Nagano visit to the White House on Wednesday:

1. Cowardice doesn’t pay.

2. Winning isn’t everything.

The U.S. men’s hockey team, those ugliest of all Americans, were not invited to the White House after several players trashed their living quarters in Nagano and not one of them had the courage to admit to the damage.

With the USOC still unable to name the guilty parties more than two months after the crime, it was decided to ban the entire team from the visit.

Then, when it came time to present President Clinton with a Team USA jacket, figure skating silver medalist Michelle Kwan was chosen for duty--miffing the mother of gold medalist Tara Lipinski no end.

“Don’t you think it’s a terrible thing for them to do to poor Tara?” Pat Lipinski said. “It’s been like this for poor Tara. It’s a terrible thing.”

She was echoing her tired, misguided refrain about an anti-Tara conspiracy run rampant in the U.S. figure skating community--that the USOC and the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. and the national media have it in for “poor Tara” because they all like Kwan better.

According to USOC spokesman Mike Moran, the assignment of presenting the jacket to Clinton was determined by a vote of the U.S. Olympic team. Skier Picabo Street and Kwan finished 1-2 in the voting, Moran said, and when injuries prevented Street from making the trip, Kwan became the presenter.

Nothing wrong, or insidious, about that, either.

No American athlete in Nagano epitomized the Olympic ideal-- which, once upon a time, had more to do with sportsmanship than gold medals and endorsements--more than Kwan, who handled her loss to Lipinski with admirable grace and dignity.

Her American teammates recognized that too, which is fine and reasonable and quite different from a snubbing of Lipinski.

THANKS, CANADA

IOC vice president Dick Pound of Canada has the best solution yet to the ongoing embarrassment that is Olympic ice dancing judging:

Get rid of ice dancing.

Pound isn’t a wholly objective observer on the issue of rigged judging and predetermined results in Olympic ice dancing--Canada’s ice-dance pair of Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz believe they were deprived of the bronze medal at Nagano by judges who had decided which teams would place 1-2-3 before the “competition” started.

“Ice dancing shouldn’t be on the Olympic program until you solve this problem and get it under control,” Pound said during the IOC executive board meetings in Sydney.

Gilbert Felli, IOC sports director, said Pound’s suggestion was too extreme, adding, “We trust this sport,” and “There is no reason” to drop ice dancing as an Olympic sport.

Felli, however, did agree to meet with International Skating Union officials in June to “discuss the future of the judging.”