Krisztina Egerszegi was known as "Egi", or "little mouse", to her Hungarian teammates. She was a mouse who roared, winning the 200m backstroke title for the third time in 1996 to become the first swimmer since Dawn Fraser, of Australia, to win the same crown at three consecutive Olympic Games, and the first woman in any sport to win five gold medals in individual events.
It could have been six but for the bad experience Egerszegi had suffered at the hands of the Chinese at the world championships in 1994 in the midst of a career in which she was surrounded by more than her fair share of rivals who were tainted by drugs scandals.
Egerszegi, one of the greatest technicians and most graceful of stylists in swimming history, had gone to the event in Rome as Empress of backstroke, with eight European titles and the world records over both 100 and 200m to her name.
She emerged with a silver medal over 200m and nothing over 100m, defeated by one of the bulked up belles of a Chinese team known as the "Golden Flowers" in Beijing before its members produced seven positive drugs tests, all for anabolic steroids.
He Cihong, Egerszegi's conqueror, was not among those who tested positive, nor did she ever again produce anywhere near the form that took her to victory over 100 and 200m in Rome.
So discouraged was Egerszegi from competing against the Chinese that she did not even enter the 100m at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, assuming, like so many others in the world of swimming, that the team from Beijing would put all its muscle into the sprint events.
The Chinese flopped, Egerszegi again retained the 200m, this time by 4.15sec, the greatest margin of victory ever in an Olympic 200m race in the pool, and swam faster over 100m backstroke leading Hungary off in the medley relay than the time in which the individual title was won.
She suffered another bad experience on the first day of the Games, however, when Michelle Smith De Bruin, the muscle-bound swimmer from Ireland, improved beyond recognition to prevent the Hungarian from retaining the 400m medley title, the first of her three surprise gold medals.
Egerszegi, like so many others, was a little bemused at Smith's progress but, champion as she was, graciously went across to Smith to offer her hand. It was refused.
Smith was later suspended from swimming for attempting to manipulate a drug test sample, one which contained whiskey and the metabolite of a banned substance.
Memories of Egerszegi are fonder. Her international career had started in 1988 with a gold medal in the 200m in Seoul, where, as a 14-year-old, she took on the might of East Germany.
Asked how he kept her calm under such pressure, her coach, Laszlo Kiss, said: "She didn't feel the pressure. She was too young. I tried to keep her from getting bored in the village by playing hide and seek with her."
At just over 7 stones, Egerszegi was 42lbs lighter than the lightest of her opponents in the 200m final and defeated two-times world champion Cornelia Sirch in 2mins 09.29sec, an Olympic record and just shy of American Betsy Mitchell's 2mins 08.60sec world record.
The breaking of that record marked what was one of the most spectacular performances in swimming history: Egerszegi wiped 1.98sec off Mitchell's standard to win the European title in Athens in 1991, her 2mins 06.62sec still beyond the reach of the current generation of backstroke specialists.
After Egerszegi retired she established a restaurant in Budapest bearing the Hungarian name for "The Mousehole". She is married with one child.
CRAIG LORD
The Times
