IT'S LATE in the evening on Saturday night and Michelle Smith and her husband cum coach Erik de Bruin have just completed a short and upbeat interview with George Hamilton of RTE. Smith, gold medal dangling from her neck, has been whisked off instantly to do a similar piece with Sky TV. Erik de Bruin is left at the mercy of a group of foreign print journalists.

He is asked first about the baffling failure of the Chinese women (ranked numbers one and two in the world) to finish in the first 16 in the event which Smith has just won.

De Bruin's jubilation at the Chinese failure is quickly punctured.

"Some people here have said that when you were competing you tested positive for steroids".

"No. That's not true. There was a problem with a test but I was reinstated by my own federation and the Dutch courts, but I don't want to get into that right now.

"But just for the factual . . ."

Erik is up out of his seat now. Clearly annoyed.

"Like I said this is a happy moment for me, I don't want to . . ."

"Are you still competing?"

"No, I coach. You think I can coach and compete?"

"I have no idea."

And Erik de Bruin stalks off into the Georgia night looking for Michelle and carrying the stigma which stays with everyone whose name is ever linked, however loosely, with drugs.

It had been a long and testing day for the tall Dutchman.

"It is worse," he said, "when you are the coach. To have to watch like that. Your work is done. All you do is worry."

And worry he did. Despite being accredited as a coach at these games by the Irish Olympic Council, he had problems moving around the swimming venue. His temper flared in the emotion of the evening and when Smith found him waiting for her in the corner of the centre immediately after the swim he was overcome.

"Ah, bhi seisean ag caoineadh," she told Radio na Gaeltachta afterwards, her Irish sparing his blushes as he sat next to her.

All night Saturday, speaking to RTE, speaking to Radio na Gaeltachta, speaking to Dutch TV, Michelle Smith has duly given credit for her achievements to the gangly former discus thrower whom she met and fell in love with at the Barcelona Olympics. No matter how great her achievements this week, people are always going to ask her about Erik.

HE is right about his test. He never tested positive for steroids. In 1993, while ranked second in the world for the discus, he tested positive for a slight excess of testosterone in the lead up to the Stuttgart World Championships.

He brought a legal case hinging on the technical irregularities of the testing procedure and was reinstated by the Dutch courts and by his own federation.

Meanwhile, his primary battle was in reshaping Michelle Smith's body and career. Bringing his background in field events to bear on the knotty problems of her waning career, he built up her upper body strength drastically and altered her view of herself as a sprinter and not an endurance athlete.

Three years ago, Michelle Smith was ranked 72nd in the world in the 400 metres individual medley. This morning she is Olympic champion. Conventional swimming wisdom would suggest that she is beyond the age when such drastic improvements were possible. Erik de Bruin's fresh perspectives and innovations may just have changed the face of women's swimming.

In the aftermath of Saturday's coup two things impressed the casual onlooker. Smith's mental hardness and the extraordinary closeness of the husband/wife team which seems to almost preclude all other distractions.

Smith has come to regard herself as a serious and elite athlete. Four years ago in Barcelona she held the Irish flag for five hours - while complaining of back pains - at the Olympics opening ceremony before competing in the 400 medley the following day.

This year, she arrived in the Olympic village, hard by the aquatic centre, two days before the same event, having, with de Bruin, taken the decision to scrap the idea of staying in a hotel in favour of cutting out all travelling time. She cossetted herself away from the distractions of the controversy over her participation in another event and focussed wholly on the job at hand.

More visible was her response to the false starts in lane eight which delayed both her heat and final on Saturday. On each occasion, as if programmed, Smith returned to her seat yards behind the pool, threw a tracksuit over her shoulders and remained in her cocoon until officials were ready to start the race.

It was an extraordinary statement of focus and a tribute to the mental discipline which de Bruin has instilled in her.

AFTERWARDS their dependence on each other was in evidence once more.

The lingering embrace immediately after the race before hitting the media scrum in the mixed zone. De Bruin removing from around his neck his wife's accreditation cards and hanging from a piece of string the wedding ring he gave her when they married on June 11th last in Hardingeveld outside Rotterdam, just two days after the Dutch national swimming championships.

The symbiosis between athlete and coach seems so complete that it is difficult to see where de Bruin finds time for his duties as coach and adviser to 12 other athletes, Dutch shot putters and discus throwers. At times, other than when she is in the pool, Smith and de Bruin seem welded to each other.

After Smith's warm down swim, when the Minister for Sport and his entourage had finally vanished into the ether an Olympic official responded to Smith's request to avoid press and media for a while.

De Bruin interjected immediately that she should "do NBC. That's nationwide."

Decisions about the shape of the rest of the evening, about required rest and appearances at the Irish victory party were taken together after consultation. Rest, massage, practice, rest was the schedule agreed upon.

There is something oddly touching about their closeness, about their ferocious suspicion of the rest of the world. Every chance they get they sell each other's virtues to the media explain the other's strengths and highlight the credit which accrues to the other.

Smith's connection with de Bruin has made her a celebrity in two nations. Interest in her achievement has sprung almost as much from Rotterdam and en virons, where the couple are based, as it has from Ireland. It was to the Dutch house in the Olympic village (where Erik's sister Corrie, also an Olympian, is billeted) that the pair decamped after the heats on Saturday morning.

This week, for a few heady days, the Olympic Games provide the glue that binds their professional relationship. Michelle Smith is in the form of her life, one of the unlikeliest and biggest stories of the Games. De Bruin is there as her shadow and crutch.

One wonders what shared passion they will choose when the great circus is over for them both. Together they have pulled this off.

Together they seem indomitable.