When Allison Wagner's mother arrived at the airport in Florida on Monday, she told her daughter of the fate of Michelle Smith de Bruin, the final chapter, the disgraceful end to her swimming career. There was no surprise or joy, simply clarity. To those in the sport, the news was three years in the coming. Wagner now says with an air of world weary resignation that the case has "always been there on my mind."
In 1996, the then 18-year-old had been leading going into the last 100 metres of the Olympic 400 metres individual medley final in Atlanta. She, and the rest of the swimming world, believed that the race would be a straight contest between herself and the elegant Hungarian champion, Krisztina Egerszegi. But it wasn't Egerszegi who kicked in the last quarter to power up from behind and dramatically pull away. De Bruin took the gold medal in four minutes 39.18 seconds, almost three seconds faster than Wagner and her rival.
Since then the American has dropped out of the sport and received treatment for the eating disorders bulimia and anorexia nervosa. She is now deciding whether international swimming can still play any part in her fractured life. A career in the pool and at 21, no inclination towards every athlete's Holy Grail, the Sydney Olympic Games next year.
"It is tiring for me to even think about devoting so many hours, so many days, seven days a week, seven or eight hours a day to training - it's tiring just to think. I question now whether it is worth it. I went to Atlanta having a very good shot. I was there and I was ready to win. The problem is that I don't know if I can go through with that again," she says.
The sport of swimming is no stranger to high achievers who fall victim to their own heightened sense of failure or low self-worth. The unrelenting training regime, the demands of career coaches and the surrogate parental role they assume over their elite swimmers as well as the pressure to perform have all contributed to the erosion of the health of those within the sport. De Bruin, despite her chanting denials, may also be a victim.
In Wagner's case, the fact that de Bruin beat her has never been far from her thoughts. Having resolutely believed all along that she was cheated has simply added to her considerable problems. As only the most driven athlete can comprehend, she speaks of the Atlanta Olympic final and its part in her catastrophic downturn in terms of deep loss.
"The Olympics are a big part of anyone's life. This decision has not closed a chapter in my life. Not at all. The decision (the CAS upholding de Bruin's four-year ban) won't bring any closure at all to me. It is reassuring, but it doesn't change anything for me. Thirty years from now, she will show her grandchildren her gold medal. I will show my grandchildren silver.
"She has those gold medals in her possession. She will always have gold and I will always have silver. It will always be that way for ever. In 1976, those people (East Germans) admitted that they cheated and the governing bodies cannot even take the medals away from them."
The anti-Americanism that greeted Janet Evans in Atlanta when she questioned de Bruin's achievements could now apply to Wagner in an environment where there is sympathy and anger in similar measure for de Bruin.
The Irish woman's perceived loss, both personal and professional in her tumble from the most elevated of pedestals, has managed to trigger both compassion and vitriol.
The "sour grapes from America" chorus in all its simplicity will undoubtedly survive. But Wagner is beyond name-calling and her belief until recently was simply that on this issue, Ireland was collectively putting the boot into American swimmers.
"Yes, I'm a bit soured from swimming," she says. "I see a bleak future for young swimmers. I see the sport getting worse. I don't want to see those young swimmers going through what I went through.
"I now have two silver medals in World Championships to people who then tested positive, Chinese swimmers, and I've a silver Olympic medal to someone who has been banned for four years. If I'm training seven or eight hours a day and for this to happen. . . it is discouraging. With my luck it could happen again.
"I don't consider myself a champion. A lot of people say you really are gold. But I don't feel in my heart that I'm champion because sitting with me is a silver medal. Yes, I guess I feel I've been dumped on. There's nothing I can do."
Wagner, unless she can trip the switch in her head and get back in the pool for Sydney, will never possess an Olympic gold medal. For the International Olympic Committee (IOC) retrospective sanctions against those caught cheating is a mine-field. Decisions based on principle are not their strong point.
The disintegration of Wagner's faith in sport will probably not horrify people as much as it should. Her impotence to resolve not one but three incidents at world level where the people who beat her were subsequently unmasked as cheats paints a bleak picture. Looking to governing bodies and their sterile rule books has proven unsatisfactory. A number of East German athletes, who were systematically doped up until as recently as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, have acknowledged their guilt and even petitioned for gold medals to be given to second-placed athletes. But the old men of the IOC have not listened.
Canadian Marianne Limpart, second to de Bruin in the 200 metres individual medley, cannot call her self an Olympic champion; similarly the drug-induced throwing records set in the 1980s are cast in stone. Who can explain why the women's javelin in Barcelona in 1992 was won by German Silke Renk with a throw of 68.34 metres while in Seoul, four years previously, East Germany's Petra Felke threw 74.68 metres?
The issue that is wasting the appetite of Wagner and athletes like her goes to the heart of not just swimming but sport. It is the unfashionable idea that honour, never mind health, is integral and assumed because cheating is so easy. "There would be satisfaction getting a medal," says the swimmer. "That would mean a lot. My father was in the armed forces and he is a lawyer. One thing they have in the army is honour. My parents are angry that things like this could happen. Maybe sometime I can come to peace with it."
