Michelle Smith: More Drug than Human, but...

At the time of the 1996 Olympic Games, the whole of Ireland was excited about swimming. Ireland's Michelle Smith was winning medals all over the place. Swimming was the thing to watch on television. The government were promising an Olympic sized swimming pool in every small town in Ireland. People who had never even taken a bath, were suddenly turning up to swimming pools at five in the morning. Nothing could stop us. This was Ireland's sporting Celtic Tiger, and just like economic Celtic Tiger that came some years later, it was nothing but a bubble: a big bubble of drugs. Smith was pumped full of so many synthetic hormones she no longer knew what species she was.

In 1998 Smith failed a drugs test when some urine was found in her whiskey sample. The shame of it. The sad reality dawned on us that all those gold medals in '96 were probably won from Smith injecting herself with Miracle Grow. For a while, some of us kept on believing. Part of RTE's coverage of the '96 Games, included the commentary of Dr. Gary O'Toole, a doctor who previously competed for Ireland in swimming. He had predicted every one of Smith's victories (and even her final bronze medal), and he said nothing to concern us over her sudden rise to Olympic champion. It later turned out that, and I was quite shocked by this, Gary O'Toole was ordered by RTÉ, Ireland's state-run broadcaster, to shut his mouth and not mention his concerns:

"The directive came down that nobody was to discuss drugs and Michelle Smith on national television" source: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20000814&slug=4036702

Michele Smith's Olympic victories stand, as she never tested positive for banned substances during the 'Games. Whatever really went on with drug-taking, it's hard to forget the vitriol shown by the loser-Americans of 1996. "She broke the rules" a bitter, twisted-faced, Janet Evans whined. As we all know: if you beat the Americans at something, they will come after you until they find a way to destroy you. That case of "sample tampering" of 1998 still seems suspicious; a tad convenient; like they couldn't catch her with the drugs, so they spiced up the samples themselves. Everyone cheats in the end.

Show me the athlete, and I'll find you the substance.
— oioiiooixiii (@oioiiooixiii) March 24, 2016

*Partial content originally published: August, 2012
more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Smith