Sports Administrators: all hat and no cattle, as other cowboys would say. Twenty journalists hung around the lobby of Lausanne Palace Hotel last Friday. Upstairs, Juan Antonio Samaranch was lying down in his permanent residence. World sport is ruled by a former fascist who lives like the Major from Fawlty Towers.
Downstairs in the lobby, where the journalists were, the FINA doping chaps were finishing up. The lengthy Michelle de Bruin hearing was followed by a remarkable moment. The honorary secretary of FINA, Gunnar Werner, emerged along with the solicitor for the defence, Peter Lennon.
Together they glided down the carpeted corridor like newly-weds heading back to the church for the photos and the confetti. Little smiles threatened the integrity of their tight lips. Were they linking arms?
Peter Lennon gave quotes. Gunnar Werner assented like a nodding dog in the back window of a banger.
Lennon spoke of "Gunnar and I". Werner beamed like a cream-whiskered cat at the implication of dreamy betrothal.
We few frowning hacks turned away and decided that a deal had been done.
Two avenues of speculation opened.
Perhaps between the clammy warmth of professional embraces and the always oppressive fear of civil litigation the FINA chaps had found themselves smiling and nodding all afternoon, allowing the defence its lavish production. The dry analysis to take place later.
Or perhaps Lennon had traded on de Bruin's age and FINA's fears. De Bruin is 29 in December, old for a contender. She suffered a neck injury last winter. Maybe a good advocate of her position might have traded tranquil retirement and an end to the whole business in exchange for token chastisement.
It's all speculation and fancy, of course. We don't know the contents of the presentation made by Lennon, but much has been made in newspaper offices and leaky grapevines over the past week of an obscure incident in 1983, when John Treacy was lifted over the stile and into the first world athletics championships, in HelsinkiE and the IAAF had words. It was agreed that they would provide Treacy with the passport of a qualifying time. One was invented, slipped on to a form and telexed to the IAAF. Treacy joined the field for the heats. Ran badly.
All clumsy and easily detectable. It got a good media airing at the time. Al Guy was prominent among the BLE people involved. We have been told by sources close to the de Bruin camp that there was much to be made of this.
So, 15 years later, it hisses like steam from every fissure in the de Bruin case.
Seville, last August. Michelle Smith's qualifying times were rejected and she was put back into slower lanes in the heats. Remember?
Or . . . On page 52 of Gold, Michelle Smith's richly unrewarding biography, we are told with regard to the World Championships in Rome in 1995:
"As it happened the IASA had copied a trend set by the Spanish federation at the Barcelona Olympics when they entered swimmers with times far greater than anything they had ever achieved. Thus Michelle Smith had been entered for the 400 metres individual medley with a time of 4.44, more than 12 seconds better than her best long-course time set at the World Championships in Perth in 1991."
And checking our files we see that on Sunday, July 7th, 1996, after the entries for the Irish swimming team for Atlanta had been done and dusted, Michelle Smith faxed the IASA as follows.
"I would like to request that the IASA submit an entry to the Olympic Council of Ireland on my behalf to swim the 400 freestyle at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. I realise the entries may already have been put forward to the OCI, but I would request that you submit my entry on the basis of my performance of 4:08.64 at Pine Crest here in Florida."
On June 11th, four weeks previously, Michelle Smith had faxed the IASA and asked that they enter her for five events. There was no mention of the 400 metres freestyle, in which her best time was a modest 4:26.18, swum in Holland in April 1995.
The swim in the untested junior meet in Pine Crest had widespread ramifications. Another Irish swimmer, Marion Madine, told the Belfast Telegraph last year:
"Originally I had been entered for the 400 metres freestyle and the 200 metres freestyle. Then Michelle set the world's best time this year in the 400 and she wanted to enter that.
"So, at a week's notice, I was then put in for the 100 metres butterfly. Not surprisingly I had a pathetic race because I had been training for the freestyle, which is an entirely different discipline."
Other effects, too.
Remember another Atlanta phenomenon? Except when she was swimming, Smith appeared to be handcuffed on one side to Pat Hickey of the OCI and on the other to Bernard Allen, then sports minister.
Hickey was instrumental in getting Smith into the 400 metres freestyle final, winning the argument at the Court of Arbitration for Sport on a technicality over representations.
This resulted famously in the Janet Evans incident, whereby Evans failed by that one critical place to make the final of the race and then gave the celebrated press conference where two years of rumours and stories about Smith finally spilt on to the table.
Allen and Hickey have since had a public and bitter divorce and Treacy has been installed as chairman of the Sports Council, a stick specifically made as an instrument to be driven up Hickey's fundament. Treacy now finds his name being cited in relation to an escape clause in yet an other Michelle Smith episode.
The web gets bigger and bigger, but now that we have mentioned Treacy's name, might we make a suggestion.
The Dubin inquiry after Ben Johnson's positive test in Seoul was one of the most refreshing and revealing things which ever happened to sport. When the current business is all over, whatever the result, perhaps the chairman of the Council for Sport might instigate something similar. We might discover for once and for all how exactly we all got here.
