CRAIG LORD
Swimming Correspondent

Craig Lord researched and compiled the material for several sections of our Olympic Games website, including the sports communities, history and heroes and GB medal-winners from 1896-1996. Lord has been Swimming Correspondent of The Times since 1989. Throughout the Nineties he was at the forefront of reporting the drugs scandals that dogged the swimming world. None came greater than the news revealed by Lord and The Times in 1998 that Michelle Smith, the Irish triple Olympic champion of 1996, faced suspension for manipulating a drug test sample. Smith was subsequently suspended for four years, retired while barred and will therefore not defend her three titles. Lord has also written on swimming for The Sunday Times since 1990 and travelled into China - a nation with 30 drugs suspensions to its name in swimming - in 1999, emerging to reveal how drug abuse was rife and how anabolic steroids were readily available in the local markets of Beijing.