I was working in a well known multinational corporation in Kildare in 1996. During the Olympics there was non stop discussion and argument over Michelle Smith’s success. Most people wanted to believe in her and went down the Vincent Hogan cheerleading road but a sizeable minority were very dubious. It led to serious and often heated debate in the canteen. Anyway about 2 days after the third gold medal a renegade friend of mine arrived into the canteen and announced loudly that Michelle Smith had just failed a drug test. There was dead silence for about 3 seconds followed by a barrage of questions and lads shouting “I fucking knew it”! Eventually someone asked my mate “How come they know the test results so quickly?” He replied matter of factly, “she couldn’t fit her mickey in the top of the bottle”.
Hogan is excellent in it. His admission about getting it wrong really frames how the country was feeling (I suspect, I’m too young to remember).
People just really wanted to believe so they did. Hogan has gone up in my estimation after listening to him on this. Doesn’t spare himself at all. Right down to saying some of his articles after Smyth was caught were self serving.
Kimmage is always a good listen especially on the big stuff like this.
A bolt out of the blue. I’ve been reading the Sunday independent excerpts on it each week, I think it’s a three parter. Her physique changed nearly overnight in her mid to late twenties according to Gary O’Toole when she went to live and train in her husband’s native Holland. She also started smashing national records that were long held by seconds, not milliseconds, in events she didn’t participate in before. Also the top American lady swimmer of the time said publicly you are supposed to decline as you reached your mid twenties not improve.
Much more preferable than the Irish sports journalist circle jerks you see on Twitter.
Is the key to start doping in your late teens so to avoid raising suspicion?
I remember there were definitely expectations that she could win a medal going in. I was 14 at the time so can only remember bits, but outside of Sonia, she was our biggest medal hope. She had won a few gold medals I think the previous year at the Europeans. I think the country was very much caught up in the whirlwind of it all. Most weren’t questioning a thing. Sure we all became swimming experts overnight.
If you do it properly you should never be caught.
Most people knew absolutely nothing about swimming or her tbf.Oireland loves a good bandwagon.
Yep, it was a great few weeks, Ireland winning Gold medals in swimming when previously qualification from the heats would have been celebrated,
Jesus, 1996 was a great summer (for me anyway)
Yeah her amazing improvement seems to have happened in the two years before Atlanta so he wasn’t a bolt from the blue there.
You have to love kimmage’s brutal honesty for calling a spade a spade. He reminds me of a journeyman boxer who’s taking on the best boxers out there, winning the odd one but the toll it’s taking on him is brutal.
Kimmage seems to be getting more and more disillusioned with all sports, I found the part where he said he wanted nothing to do with the olympics in any way shape or form to be quite sad tbh especially from a sports journalist
The icing on the cake was Kimmage admitting he’d love to write her book 
He’d love to know and understand the decision process that goes into what she did, the influence of her husband, would she do it again etc.
I think he’s good as he wants to get into the mind of a person for good or for bad. The sport is a side show really.
That Michelle Smith podcast is a bit meh. Journalists talking about their favourite topic. Themselves.
Hit me up with something for my run
There’s one on Bernie Madoff on Wondery atm.
Ross o k is a hard listen