Michelle Smith - the most intriguing Olympic story never told
He was exaggerating - just.
How do you set an Irish swimming record, the joke used to go.
Reach the end of the pool.
On the it's-just-not-their-game scale, Irish swimmers were ranked somewhere between Ethiopian sumo wrestlers and pgymy high jumpers as imperfect fits.
Then along came Michelle Smith.
With the Olympic Games starting next week, former British Olympic champions have been feted and celebrated like never befiore.
All except one - Michelle Smith (now De Bruin), the invisable woman and arguably the least celebrated triple gold medallist in Olympic history.
She was asked to carry the Olympic torch in the relay, but declined which surprised no one.
De Bruin did not return my calls for an interview request yesterday which is true to form.
"She does not do interviews and has no public profile whatsoever," Mal Logan, sports editor of the Irish Times, said yesterday.
"She has become quite a respected barrister and probably the public have moved on."
From drug cheat to barrister - it sounds like an Irish joke but it's true.
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Mother-of-two De Bruin, who speaks four languages, operates a successful law practice and is the author of a book on transnational litigation.
You can call her by phone, but she will never discuss her swimming career after being banned for four years in 1998 for tampering with a drug sample.
Michelle de Bruin, long considered a plodder on the international ranks, looked to be fading unspectacularly towards retirement when, two years before Atlanta, she moved to Holland to be with her future husband Eric de Bruin, a Dutch discus thrower under a four-year suspension for using drugs.
During his suspension, de Bruin gave an interview in which he said: "Who says doping is unethical? Sport is by definition dishonest".
The quote had damning relevance as his wife sustained a form surge that made most purple patches look like faded lilac.
Blossoming at an age (26) when most swimmers are retired, she shaved a whopping 21 seconds off her best time in the 400m medley in Atlana, taking gold and putting Irish sports fans on a previously unreachable cloud.
Ireland, after all, had won just two Olympic gold medals since the War. She won three in four days and a country which didn't even have a 50m pool suddenly owned the best swimmer in the world.
In the heady days after her success old classics such as The Beatles' Michelle were dusted off and played on high rotation on Irish radio.
But a year after her Olympic success two local drug testers showed up at the de Bruin home in Kells. but could not get past the locked gates.
Finally, de Bruin let them in but disappeared for five minutes and handed over a urine sample which smelt of whiskey.
Forensic scientists later testified that had she digested the amount of whiskey needed to produce a sample like that she would have died, but she still owns her Olympic medals because she did not test positive in competition.
Some of her work as a barrister is laced with irony. A few years back she appeared at Wicklow District Court to defend woman from a charge of refusing to give a breath analysis to police after she was taken back to the station.
Her wins divided a nation. There were fights in bars, fallouts between family members and hysterical columns on both sides in the local newspapers.
"That issue and when Roy Keane walked out on a World Cup campaign were the two biggest for splitting opinion," Logan said.
Only last month Irish senator Eamonn Coghlan, speaking before being given a distinguished fellowship of Athlone Institute of Technology, pounded the pulpit in her defence.
"There are athletes around the world that are tainted with positive tests and won medals who were never castigated in their home countries like Michelle was," Mr Coghlan said.
"There are a lot of people who would agree with me, but there are also a lot of people who would disagree with me."
You can say that again.
One Irish journalist who had backed her at $50 to win three gold medals was seen jumping on a table in the press box as she charged to victory, but not all of them were so intoxicated by her success.
Irish Times columnist Tom Humphries resigned (he returned a month later) after his paper refused to run two of his stories, including when he visited Holland and talked to drug experts about the preposterous thought that a 26-year-old could morph from a duffer to a dolphin through natural improvement.
Innuendo was as thick as treackle in statements made by big names such as America's Janet Evans.
"There are a lot of accusations going on around the poolside, and I'm not making any of them," she said, sounding like one of those angry football coaches who announces "tonight I am making absolutely no comment about the performance of the referee."
Smith duly retaliated in her book by claiming: "Janet Evans took the gold medal for bitchiness in a field of one."
But even respected local observers had concerns.
Former Irish swimmer-turned-television pundit Gary O'Toole took one look at her Miss Popeye physique and felt his jaw hit the pool deck.
"I looked at her and said,'My God, what have you been taking?'," O'Toole recalled years later.
"Something was going on. I said to her, 'Well, whatever you're doing, be careful.' She didn't say anything to me."
O'Toole was given a directive not to mention the drugs in commentary which suited him fine because, as a brilliant physician who had graduated with honors, he had strong, informed views but, with record audiences of 1.5 million watching on television, did not want to be the man who told the world that Snow White could be wearing licorice undies.
Smith's book, produced in October 1996, was tipped to be a bestseller, but sold only moderately in Ireland and poorly elsewhere.
A lucrative deal with an air-freight company was lost after the Games and a government contract to promote tourism and the Irish language was also discontinued when she was banned.
It is not known whether she will the Olympics but if she does we may not even know about it.
True to form there would be no interviews. One of the most intriguing stories in Olympic history will never be told.