Michelle Smith Medals

Tell me about it. There's been a lot of speculation about how it happened, most of it bizarre. The testers, a strange couple IMHO, were insistent in their evidence that it was not introduced in the jacks and the smell of whiskey only became evident in the kitchen when they decanted Michelle's sample into smaller vials to be sent for testing.

My big issue with this whole thing is that as suggested earlier in the thread, people are trying to re-write history. The facts are she won her European gold medals (two of them) before the Olympics and her Olympic medals (4 of them) and no-one can produce hard evidence that she doped or cheated. This lack of evidence is proof in some peoples' eyes that she cheated.

Some may point to the fact that her spoiled 1998 sample had traces of a banned substance in it BUT this substance was not banned until after the Olympics and was consumed by many athletes as a food supplement and it was no secret they were taking it. They literally went to the local chemists, bought it legally without prescription over the counter and ate it on their cornflakes.

In another strange twist, this substance which chemically is NOT an anabolic steroid was legally classified as such by the sporting organisations and added to the banned list as a result, leaving chemists, athletes and "people who know" astounded.
 

Is that you Michelle?
 
The lack of a plausible explanation how she dramatically improved between 1992 and 1996 works for me .

I think you could use the same logic for quite a few athletes...just look at the young British lad who won the 100m last night. Literally has knocked a whole second off his PB this season. A truely astounding improvemnet over 100m jump, but no-one is saying he is a drugs cheat.

I am not defending MS by the way, unfortuantely she will always be tainted which, rightly or wrongly, is just a shame.
 

He was 19 though. Same with the 16 year old Chineese swimmer during the Olympics. Big jumps in PB times are not unusual for young athletes. They are unusual to say the least for a athlete in her mid 20's.