De Bruin: Irish swimmers unprepared

CONTROVERSIAL former swimming champion Michelle De Bruin, who won three gold medals at the Atlanta Olympics amid unproven allegations that she took drugs, has criticised Irish swimmers and Swim Ireland for not being properly prepared in Beijing.

The 38-year-old barrister also expressed dismay at Irish athletes’ criticism of Sport Minister Martin Cullen who travelled first-class to Beijing while they went economy class.

“Really athletes at this stage should be focusing on their own race, on their own competition and shouldn’t let things like that interrupt their preparation. I have been to three Olympics and you generally wouldn’t even know what minister is where at what time. It’s not important for your preparation,” she said.

Ms De Bruin said she takes great pride in telling her child about her Olympic participation: “At this stage I love watching the Olympics. It’s completely different watching it to actually being a competitor yourself. I had the honour of competing for Ireland at three Olympics and I was able to tell my eight-year-old I carried the flag into the opening ceremony of the ’92 games and the closing ceremony of the ’96 games. So I have done and really achieved everything I wanted to in my career. I can look now at the Olympics... and simply enjoy it because I’ve moved on and I’m doing other things now.”

Following the Atlanta Olympics, the three times gold medal winner was banned from competitions for four years after being found guilty by the International Swimming Federation of tampering with a drug test.

“I was only focused on one thing,” she said yesterday in an interview with Newstalk 106-108 fm.

“I had four races during the week. Once I won the first one, I was Olympic champion and I had achieved my goal. My entire career then was a success. But I knew I had three more races and all I did for the rest of the week was concentrate on each race as the race arrived.

“You don’t let anything break that focus until that week is over,” she said.