MAKING WAVES
Golden girl: but some of De Bruijn's rivals have cast some doubt on the extraordinary improvement in the triple Olympic champion's times in both freestyle and butterfly
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IF ANYBODY had said a year ago that Inge de Bruijn would win three Olympic gold medals and set three world records in Sydney, the reply might have mentioned the winged porker that played chief protagonist in the curly tale of Michelle Smith de Bruin - no relation - the week before the Games in Atlanta.As it was with Michelle, so has it been with Inge as far as parallels to the Irish woman - the boyfriend-coach, age,
history, explanations - and the inevitable whispering campaign.
Flashback to Istanbul. Susan Rolph punched the air in delight as she became the first British woman to win a European swimming title since 1962. In the lane next to her was De Bruijn, also delighted after finishing second in the 100m freestyle in 55.24sec to Rolph's 55.03sec. Later that same week, De Bruijn collected her first European title, in 58.49sec over 100m butterfly. After Sydney, her best times now stand at 53.77sec
for freestyle, and 56.61sec for butterfly, while the 24.13sec she clocked in the semi-final of the 50m freestyle raced De Bruijn straight into the book of statistical abberations; for the past 20 years, three seconds had separated the men's and women's world record over 50m - it is now just 2.51sec.
De Bruijn, 27, is no longer racing her rivals, merely the clock, and women swimmers look on dazed while the Dutch angrily reject speculation. Richard Quick, the US women's coach who had started the anti-Smith ball rolling in Atlanta, declared on day five in Sydney that the swimming was "absolutely not a drugs-free meet".
Dr Cees Rein van den Hoogenband, the father of 100m and 200m winner Pieter van den Hoogenband, said: "I am fed up with the accusations and speculation. The first one who accuses Pieter or Inge of doping, I will take them to court."
He challenged the authorities to take blood from the two swimmers and freeze it, so that when testing got more advanced, the blood could be tested in the future. America was simply jealous, he stated.
The good doctor did not stop there. He described de Bruijn as "a wonderful sportswoman" who did not "deserve this nonsense". De Bruijn, he said, had been a "lazy girl" in the past who had been kicked off the Dutch swimming team before the 1996 Olympic Games for staying in bed when she should have been up training. "Now she trains like hell," he added. Inge's boyfriend, Jacco Verhaeren, is Pieter's coach
at Eindhoven. Yet in 1997 she moved to the United States to be tutored by Paul Bergen. The results showed the following year, when she translated world-class short-course form into the long-course pool. With Bergen she took up a dry land programme that included weight-lifting and climbing ropes. She also swam in shoes and wore weight belts in the water for extra drag in training.
All of which produced a terrific swimmer, whose results prompted the following from a rival. "I'm not accusing Inge of anything," said Jenny Thompson of the US, whose world record over 100m butterfly had stood at 57.88sec before it was shattered by de Bruijn. "I think these questions have to be asked," Thompson continued. "You only have to look at the history of our sport to know that that has to be
right."
The history of the sport is a shameful record of East Germans, Chinese and random individuals from all over the globe. De Bruijn is swimming a league ahead of her rivals. But she is not alone in that. Take Misty Hyman of the US, who won the 200m butterfly in 2mins 05.88sec - a 3.4sec improvement and just 0.07sec outside the world record.
Hyman admitted taking "like, eight million supplements" supplied by Glen Luepnitz, a specialist in cancer research in Texas who is spearheading an American experiment in Sydney. This includes glutamine, which, he says, increases the natural production of human Growth Hormone (hGH) four-fold during the night while the swimmer sleeps.
He said: "We have watched what has happened around uswith regard to the cheating of other countries and our goal is to beat the cheaters without doing anything illegal." There the information stops: "I would love to be more specific but at this point being extremely specific would be detrimental to the athletes because I believe that what I'm doing gives them a competitive edge."
De Bruijn has set 11 world records this year and is so impressive as to be predictable. Even in the 50m freestyle yesterday, when she clocked 24.32sec, one of the nine top-ten fastest-ever times that she holds. The one she does not belongs to the absent Le Jingyi, whose record she took in May.
Swimmers in the 1980s and 90s knew they could not beat the East Germans and the Chinese. It has reached that status with de Bruijn, whose improvement is staggering. Take the following example: in 1993 in Sheffield, she won the bronze medal in the 50m freestyle at the European championships in 25.86sec. Seven years later, in the same pool, she swam a world record 25.64sec - but swimming butterfly.
After the 24.13sec she clocked over 50m freestyle, she said: "Somebody asked me what my limits are, and I don't know." She was not alone.
Speaking generally, John Leonard, the head of the World Swimming Coaches' Association, said there had been suspect performances in the pool. He believes that insulin growth factor 1 is the preferred drug of some in the pool, but since it cannot be tested for, all the talk of "the cleanest Games" is "absolute crap".
De Bruijn says the same of the speculation about her. As she paraded around the pool waving to the Dutch team yesterday, the speakers belted out Heroes Live Forever. History sometimes tells a different story, one that will only change on the day drug-testing catches up with the chemical count, and swimmers will be free from the triple plagues of drugs, the temptation to take them and the whispering that now accompanies every exceptional effort, genuine or not.
CRAIG LORD
Sunday Times
