It was still dark when the Guys pulled up outside Kellsgrange House, Co Kilkenny, on January 10th last. The trip was a familiar but scarcely enjoyable part of their strange job.
The couple who had previously been responsible for randomly testing Ireland's most famous athlete had quit the task because they felt uncomfortable with their role, deciding that at $50 dollars a test plus mileage, it was more trouble than it was worth.
So it had fallen to the Guys to present themselves periodically at the home of Michelle and Erik de Bruin and demand 70 millilitres of urine from the triple Olympic champion. They were recruited by the English drug test expert John Whetton, and had undergone the training which the job required.
If the road to Kilkenny was well worn, the results were often frustrating. Typically, the Guys and other testers from the world's leading testing agency - the Swedish company International Doping Tests and Management (IDTM) - followed the detail supplied by the swimmer, which informed FINA she would be training at the local St Paul's pool at a given time. But in over a year of testing, Michelle Smith had never been located at the pool.
The Guys had made the journey just two days previously, registering a "no show" as they failed to locate the swimmer at either the pool or her home. Michelle de Bruin's record of no shows for random tests was public knowledge and she had received a warning from FINA the previous year.
Her reluctance to treat with the officials charged with doping control duties was well known within the sport. In July 1995, her own federation, the Irish Amateur Swimming Association (IASA), had written to her in stern terms threatening that if the "doping control consent form for the National Swimming Championships . . . is not received in this office by return duly completed and signed by you, your entries will be withdrawn from the National Championships".
The text of the letter was surprising, the fact that it had to be sent to her parents' address in Rathcoole and faxed to a mysterious number in Holland more so. Despite the fact that it was well over a year since Michelle Smith had emigrated, she had still failed to provide IASA with an address.
This chill Saturday morning was different, however. As the cold insinuated itself into their car, Al and Kay Guy drove towards the de Bruin residence, Kellsgrange House; a large and picturesque house, structurally three buildings knocked into one and protected by a chest-high wall.
The de Bruins had purchased it just before house prices in Ireland went through the roof. With 20 metres of driveway between the gates and the front door, it made for an impressive sight in summer with the sunlight pouring through the trees and playing on the whitewashed house walls.
Early on January 10th, however, the sky was still charcoal, no lights were on at home and the front gates were heavily padlocked. The Guys and sat in their car, waiting for a sign of life.
Early morning is a good time for random testing.
In cases where the athlete has proved difficult to locate, or has given unreliable information regarding training schedules, the start of the day is the perfect moment for testers to arrive. Combined with the element of surprise is the fact that the quality of the urine to be had from the athlete after a night's sleep, when the metabolites have settled, makes for rich pickings in the laboratory.
The occupants of Kellsgrange House had reasons to be cheerful on January 10th, 1998. A minor road accident at a T-junction in Co Carlow late the previous autumn had resulted in a neck injury that kept Michelle de Bruin away from the World Swimming Championships in Perth.
Not being in Perth was a blessing of sorts. That morning, the papers were full of the new buzz phrase of swimming. Human growth hormone was one of a number of new designer drugs which were undetectable through urine tests. In Perth, the swimming world was speaking of little else: one of the Chinese swimming delegation had been caught passing through customs in Melbourne with a hip flask full of HGH.
The principal plank of Michelle de Bruin's defence since the controversy of the Atlanta Games had been her claim that she was the most tested athlete in the world. So her presence in Perth, while the swimming media frothed about a substance entirely undetectable in urine samples, would have been irresistible.
Tucked up in bed in Kilkenny, she was better off being far away from the World Championships and the microphones.
Things were looking good in other respects also. The three gold medals she had brought home from Atlanta had proved to have no alchemic powers for altering the couple's financial situation. Expecting a major windfall, the de Bruins had been disappointed to lose the backing of their major pre-Olympic sponsor, the courier firm TNT, just after the Games.
New endorsement opportunities had been scant. Michelle had appeared on TV advertisements for shampoo and for the promotion of the Irish language, and had featured in a poster campaign for a dairy company. But Speedo, whose Aquablade suit she had worn with such prominence in Atlanta, had steadfastly ignored her. So had the rest of the commercial world.
The poor financial yield and the drugs question had hurt de Bruin, but there were other factors. She was an Irish phenomenon and Ireland is a very small market. Furthermore, as with many other sports, the Irish only show an interest in swimming once every four years when an Olympic celebration invades their living rooms.
Michelle de Bruin had thus been unable to cash in on her Olympic glory. Her attrition rate with agents didn't help either. She had hired and fired two since her rise to prominence and was on the third.
Yet this January morning the couple were getting over their financial disappointment. Michelle, ironically perhaps, had expressed an interest in working in the media after her swimming career wound down.
The previous summer she had co-presented an Irish television programme, the Sporting Press Gang. The pay was poor but Erik had also been paid (as a consultant) and the reaction to Michelle's cool broadcasting style had been positive. A long-term career within the ranks of the despised media was a distinct possibility.
In the short term, meanwhile, swimming was beginning to yield a moderate wage also. De Bruin had generally eschewed the attractions of the world swimming circuit, missing grands prix and highprofile events in favour of smaller competitions which generally didn't include drug-testing unless records were broken. All her pre-Olympic swims in 1996 were in small events with no drug-testing.
This tactic was beginning to pay off financially in 1998. Small events, whose cachet would be considerably enhanced by the presence of a triple Olympic champion, were prepared to pay up to £5,000 a time for her presence in the pool.
Michelle was also cashing in on the growing trend for skins, or winner-takes-all events, and was exploring the possibilities of making guest appearances for clubs in exchange for cash. She had swum a skins event in Australia earlier in the winter, taking a disappointing A$4,000 (£1,762) out of an all-expenses-paid trip. Later she flew to Brazil and guested for a local team in the national championships.
Cash was also flowing in from other sources. The Leinster branch of IASA had paid Erik and her a couple of times to get into the pool with youngsters on coaching courses and the previous summer she had attempted a number of Irish and European short course records for cash rewards put up by Irish sponsors.
The IASA had also contributed £4,000 to her training fund for the Perth World Championships, but her road accident neck injury forced her to pull out not long after the payment was received.
At around the same time, the de Bruins returned the Opel car which they had been lent by General Motors when a prominent businessman presented them with a Lexus and made Michelle an honorary member of the prestigious Mount Juliet golf club.
So life was good, getting better, when Michelle de Bruin opened the front door to Kellsgrange House 25 minutes after the Guys' car pulled up at the gate.
The details of precisely what happened next have been slow to emerge. The Guys have drawn a discreet veil of professional silence over the whole affair, refusing to elaborate in even the most general terms about what transpired.
However, FINA officials close to the case have become aware of what allegedly went on through their familiarity with the report sent by the testers to the Swedish testing agency, IDTM. The Guys supplied their employers with a detailed timetable of all the events of the morning. Some details conflict with statements made by Michelle de Bruin after the story broke in late April, but by then, IDTM had checked and rechecked the facts as reported to them.
Michelle de Bruin took one look at the Guys' car at the gate and went back inside the house.
The Guys waited. Not long afterwards she appeared again, this time walking slowly down the driveway. A brief conversation took place through the locked gate. The swimmer turned to walk back up the driveway but then apparently remembered the gate.
She came back, turned the key in the padlock and walked quickly back up the driveway to her house. Al Guy got out of his car, removed the padlock and chain, opened the gate, drove through and left the car in order to close the gate again.
The Guys had been in the kitchen of Kellsgrange House with Michelle de Bruin for perhaps 10 minutes when Erik de Bruin joined them. He appeared to have just woken and was surprised to see the testers waiting downstairs. A conversation in Dutch ensued between the de Bruins.
After some minutes, Erik addressed the testers in English. He was sorry but a test would be impossible that morning because his wife was due at Dublin airport at 10 a.m. to meet an incoming flight. It was now about 8.20 a.m. and Kellsgrange house is 80 miles from Dublin.
It was suggested by the testers that the rules made provision in these cases. If a trip to Dublin was unavoidable, the testers could travel with the swimmer, one accompanying her in her car, the other following behind. Whenever she felt capable of supplying 70 millilitres of urine, the cars could pull in somewhere; the women could visit the toilet and the sample could be taken and sealed. Finally, the de Bruins announced that Michelle would stay.
According to her own testimony, Michelle de Bruin had just urinated when the Guys called that morning. Empty bladders are a common problem for testers, who bring sealed beverages with them to help the athlete aid and abet nature. Michelle de Bruin chose a sealed bottle of Aqua Libra. They all waited.
Drug-testing is the ugly side of sport, the dirty police work which sponsors and television companies would rather not know about. Every time we watch an Olympic gold medal being hung on an athlete's neck, we must assume that not long afterwards the victorious medal winner finds himself or herself in a cubicle in the company of a person paid to watch them urinate.
They will choose a small plastic beaker and, using mid-stream urine, endeavour to fill it to at least the 70 millilitre mark. It is an unseemly business and the price that must be paid for the joy of sport.
The flying squads of doping control officers whose job it is to collect the urine samples of the world's elite athletes are familiar with the techniques of deception. Athletes are often difficult to locate, despite the requirement that they fill out forms on a quarterly basis detailing their training schedules and availabilities.
Michelle de Bruin had some form in this regard. In February 1997, The Irish Times published documented evidence of a series of problems which FINA had encountered in attempting to keep track of the swimmer. Her own federation had complained that no address had been supplied for her after her move to Holland in 1994. Less than three months before the 1996 Olympic Games, de Bruin had informed FINA that she didn't know where she would be training for the Games. By February 1997 de Bruin had received an official warning on the subject of missed drug tests.
If she was often hard to find, the samples she had submitted over the years since her first random test in 1994 revealed nothing more unusual than a fluctuating testosterone level. Regardless of the levels of discomfort sampling officers may have experienced when calling to the de Bruin residence, the tests had always been carried out without breach of procedure.
Again the case history file in this regard was thick. Cases have been recorded of athletes submitting clean urine which transpired to have come from the bladder of a different person entirely.
Contamination of samples is a rare but not entirely uncommon problem. The addition of a tiny amount of a foreign substance like vinegar will cast sufficient doubt on the process to ensure that the case won't withstand a legal challenge.
The Dubin inquiry into the case of Ben Johnson, the Canadian runner who tested positive after taking gold in an Olympic 100metre sprint, learned he had consumed a mixture of honey and vinegar before testing in a futile attempt to confuse the testers.
Occasionally a female athlete wishing to contaminate a sample will run a finger quickly down across the anus and let the accumulated bacteria on her fingertop wash into the plastic container in the flow of urine.
It was not known until quite recently that Michelle de Bruin needed two attempts to supply the necessary amount of urine on the morning of January 10th, 1997. Having supplied about 40mls on her first visit to the lavatory in the company of Kay Guy, she came back into the kitchen area and sat for another 25 to 30 minutes before departing to the lavatory a second time.
On this occasion when the athlete and tester returned to the kitchen, the small container of urine had a noticeable whiskey smell coming from it. Al Guy's past life as a customs officer had included a spell as a distillery inspector and the distinct odour would immediately have struck him. Testers are not encouraged in these circumstances to challenge athletes. In a circumstance with sufficient underlying tensions already at play, the suggestion by a tester that something has occurred which may potentially damage the athlete's career is not a good idea.
Both parties observed the sealing of the sampling vessels. Michelle was asked to inspect the code numbers and to fill out the standard form confirming the matching of the code numbers, her satisfaction with the proceedings as they had taken place.
On the form, there is a comment area where the athlete may bring to the attention of the testing agency any irregularities they feel may have occurred. Both Michelle and Erik de Bruin were familiar with this facility. Erik had availed of it extensively on his infamous trespass into the doping control area at the 1995 European Swimming Championships in Vienna when he acquired the accreditation badge of a Belgian official, gained access and began listing objections to the procedure in Dutch on behalf of the Irish swimmer. The incident came close to getting Michelle de Bruin expelled from the championships.
With all vessels sealed and packed away, the Guys took their leave of the de Bruins. Their subsequent report to the testing agency IDTM suggested that both had noticed the whiskey odour emanating from the second sample, and that there may have been slightly unusual sounds while the liquid was being passed.
Rather than the expected hiss sound of water being passed, there was a "plonk, plonk" sound as though something was dropped into the liquid.
There the involvement of Al and Kay Guy all but ended. The samples travelled by special courier to a lab in Barcelona, where science confirmed what the sense of smell had first suggested.
IDTM, which has never lost one of its own doping cases, checked and rechecked the chain of events that morning. Any failure by the testers could lead to costly legal proceedings and a severe loss of reputation.
In Barcelona, the samples were checked and rechecked, and FINA's office in Lausanne was informed of the findings. More checking and more consultation and the passage of events brought Michelle de Bruin to Lausanne to face the music on a Friday two years to the day after she had listened to her national anthem being played after she won her last gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics.