SWIMMING; Olympic Swimming Star Banned; Tampering With Drug Test Cited - The New York Times
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The career of Michelle Smith de Bruin, the Irish swimmer who won three gold medals at the 1996 Summer Olympics, appeared to end in disgrace yesterday when swimming's world governing body banned her from competition for four years after finding that she had manipulated a drug test by spiking her urine sample with alcohol.
The ruling landed a shattering blow in Ireland, where de Bruin, who competed as Michelle Smith in the Atlanta Games, had become a heroine as the country's first woman to win an Olympic gold medal. Now she has become one of the most accomplished athletes to be banned in a drug scandal.
Her case is equally compelling because it is relatively rare for an athlete to be caught cheating by tampering with a urine sample.
Drug experts suspect that the use of a substance such as alcohol to manipulate a drug sample is an attempt to mask forbidden performance-enhancing drugs that are used to improve strength and endurance.
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Even as she won her Olympic races in Atlanta and was congratulated in person by President Clinton, suspicions arose about de Bruin's performances, given that her times had improved dramatically late in her career. Suspicion continued to grow after de Bruin missed at least one out-of-competition drug test following the Atlanta Games.
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As she did in Atlanta, de Bruin, who is 28, has continued to maintain that she does not use performance-enhancing drugs. She passed all of her drug tests in Atlanta and her medals for the Games are not in jeopardy.
Neither she nor her lawyer commented on the ban, but de Bruin is scheduled to hold a news conference today in Dublin. She has previously said that she would appeal any ban to the Swiss-based International Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Her banishment follows a long list of suspensions for Chinese female swimmers and is the latest in a series of drug scandals for Olympic-related sports this summer, including the world's premier bicycle race, the Tour de France.
The scandals have prompted the International Olympic Committee to call for a worldwide drug summit next January in Lausanne, Switzerland.
''I think it's a shame that someone who has competed on such a high level would be in this situation, but you've got to compete with integrity and it's important to train with integrity,'' said Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles, the first woman to be selected as a vice president of the I.O.C.
Later this month, DeFrantz will attend a meeting of the I.O.C.'s executive board in Lausanne, at which time planning will begin for a reappraisal of the Olympic committee's drug-testing policies.
Last Jan. 10, de Bruin was given an unannounced drug test in her home city of Dublin as part of an out-of-competition doping control program administered by FINA.
Random, out-of-competition testing is considered the most reliable way to monitor athletes, who are more likely to find ways to avoid detection at announced tests given at major competitions.
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Her sample, tested in a laboratory in Barcelona, Spain, that is accredited by the I.O.C., was found to have ''unequivocal signs of adulteration,'' according to the lab report.
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The report said that the concentration of alcohol present ''is in no way compatible with human consumption'' and that the sample showed ''a very strong whiskey odor.''
A second test on de Bruin's urine sample was performed May 21, and the results were compatible with the January test, according to FINA. At a hearing on July 24, a federation doping panel found that the sample had been manipulated in an uncertain manner by de Bruin and not by the laboratory, the collectors or the transporters of the sample.
De Bruin was banned from national and international competition for four years, which makes her ineligible for the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia. It is highly unlikely that de Bruin would be able to remain in competitive form for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.
While FINA said it did not know for sure how de Bruin altered her drug test, athletes have attempted to manipulate urine samples by smuggling a small pouch containing water or someone else's urine into the testing area.
''The swimmer stressed that no banned substance had been detected in her urine,'' FINA said of de Bruin, referring to her presence at the July 24 doping panel hearing. ''She asserts that from her side there was no physical manipulation of the sample.''
Her suspension is part of an embarrassing summer for sport that saw Festina, the world's top cycling team, thrown out of the Tour de France for the systematic use of EPO, a genetic copy of a hormone that increases production of red blood cells and is sought by athletes who want to improve their oxygen-carrying capacity and endurance.
Last week, two other Olympic gold medalists from the United States -- the 1996 shot-put champion Randy Barnes and a 1992 relay team member Dennis Mitchell -- were suspended by track and field's world governing body for possible doping offenses.
American swimmers and coaches said they thought that de Bruin's ban was a sign that FINA's assertive new doping control program was working.
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''I think FINA is doing the right thing with its out-of-competition testing program,'' Carol Zaleski, president of the United States swimming federation, said in an interview. ''Obviously people who are using things they shouldn't are most likely to be caught there rather than in a competitive situation.''
At the Atlanta Games, Janet Evans, along with other American coaches and swimmers, questioned the legitimacy of de Bruin's performances because she had suddenly moved to the top of international competition at a relatively late age and after a mediocre career. She was not ranked among the top 25 swimmers at any distance, for any stroke, as late as 1993.
Further suspicions were raised by the fact that her husband, Erik de Bruin, a former Dutch discus thrower, had been suspended for excessive levels of testosterone, the male sex hormone that also can be used as a muscle-building anabolic steroid. Both de Bruin and her husband said that her performances were improved by weight lifting and other training techniques.
In Dublin yesterday, Jim McDaid, Ireland's sports minister, said that de Bruin's ban was a ''personal tragedy for the swimmer and her family.''
McDaid said, ''Like the rest of the Irish people, I'm saddened and disappointed by this development.''