Yawn. It is with heavy heart that this column once again returns to the thorny subject of Michelle Smith de Bruin. Those who are bored with the whole sorry business might like to skip to the crossword at this point. We understand. Being a sick man, your correspondent has no choice, however, other than to plough on. And on.

There are two types of article written about Michelle Smith de Bruin. Those gushing testimonies which Michelle cuts out and puts in her scrapbook and those more cautious pieces which Michelle cuts out and sends to her lawyer.

In the wake of last week's medal gush some questions need to be asked. Not those which were asked in Atlanta last summer when the world was marvelling at how a hard-working but mediocre swimmer of 26 and diminutive stature had turned into a world beater with nought but the help of a drug-banned athlete from another sport.

Now we know that those questions gave no offence. Indeed, we remember when Paul Kimmage of the Sunday Independent asked Michelle at the press conference in Atlanta if she understood why, given the scale of her improvements, the questions had to be asked, Michelle replied: "Yes. Yes I would."

Anyway, we are resigned to the miracle. We know now that it is possible for a 27-year-old to work out in a little pool in Kilkenny and co-present a TV programme and flog milk and shampoo in her spare time and then head off every now and then and be a Euro beater and smash old records held by drugged-up East German kids. Sure, as Karen Pickering of Britain said last week, "what can you do?"

No. Seville gives rise to new questions. They concern the Irish Amateur Swimming Association and Chalkie White, the swimming correspondent for the best little daily organ in Abbey Street, the Irish Independent.

Yes. Chalkie is the chap whom the Irish In- dependent have decided should cover their swimming. Instead of a journalist that is.

There is a difference. Chalkie works for Guinness. Journalists drink Guinness. Journalists ask questions. Chalkie answers them. Journalists occasionally receive solicitors' letters. Chalkie delivers solicitors' letters to journalists. He delivered one on behalf of Michelle and Erik to a fine Canadian swimming journalist of our acquaintance just last week in Seville.

Chalkie answers questions. Earlier this year Chalkie went in to bat yet again for Michelle Smith de Bruin. The unedited version of Chalkie's long and often confused rebuttal of the case made against Smith de Bruin by the world's most prominent swimming journalist, Dr Phillip Whitten, in the world's most prominent swimming magazine, Swimming World, is available at present on the SwimInfo site on the internet. Fascinating reading it makes too.

Here's a good bit . . . "Let's now turn to one of Smith's biggest critics in Atlanta, (Chalkie then names a prominent servant of Irish swimming). Though careful not to make any public comment he (the prominent servant of Irish swimming) has been engaged in a lengthy whispering campaign linking Smith with drug abuse. He has made such suggestions in my company."

Wow! Revelation! One would think that that Mr X would have been court marshalled by now, stripped of his Speedos and paraded before the public like poor Janet Evans as a warning to all of what can happen to those who are blamed when a sports star is deemed to be insufficiently rewarded or insufficiently loved.

Come back Janet all is forgiven.

David McCullough, director of swimming of the IASA, has taken the trouble to write to the SwimInfo site and correct a thing or two. Commenting that he doesn't wish to become involved in the "Michelle Smith Affair" he merely clarifies Chalkie's position within the IASA and hopes that none of the anti-American nonsense which Chalkie spews out in the course of his epic will affect relations between the IASA and its American pals. At no point does the director of Irish swimming defend the prominent swimming servant Mr X from the accusation of being a whispering rumour-monger.

Why would he? Mr X is alive and well and still part of the IASA. They, with a few most honourable exceptions, have chosen to rewrite their own torrid history. There are members whom this column has spoken to (tapes are still here thank goodness) who might have fitted the identity of Mr X just nicely. We must presume that they were among the whisper-mongers whom Smith de Bruin was referring to in the spring of 1995 (before Atlanta, before Vienna) when, with regards to drugs rumours, she told Johnny Watterson in the Sunday Tribune . . .

"You can't go around explaining everything to every single person that you meet . . . I did find it offensive the first time I heard it and thought `this is a load of rubbish'. Now I think `why should I really care. I know what I'm doing. I know how I'm training. I know how I'm eating'."

These are the same IASA members who according to Harm Beyer, the magistrate and swimming official at the centre of the Eric de Bruin fake accreditation story, asked him NOT to accredit Mr de Bruin for the Vienna European championships. They were going on the record prior to Seville to the effect that if Michelle wanted the Queen of Sheba to massage her toes before a race then it would have to be done.

The same IASA members who noted in 1994 that they were finding it hard to locate Michelle as they had no address for her in Holland and all correspondence had to be channelled through her parents. The same IASA members who have had their offer of life membership turned down by Smith de Bruin.

This is the IASA who (and get this) made a surprise contribution to the FINA congress which took place in Atlanta last year the day before the Olympics started. A motion was on the floor concerning the issue of drugs in swimming. To deal with the institutionalised nature of state cheating in the former East Germany and in China it was being proposed that federations whose swimmers fail a certain number of drug tests should be punished as well as the individual swimmers. An Irish delegate stood up and expressed the view that it wouldn't be fair to punish the home federation. Instead the federation of the country in which a swimmer was domiciled should be punished.

Last week the IASA were busy claiming on behalf of Smith de Bruin that nobody knew that you were supposed to attend a mandatory press conference after winning a gold medal at a European championship. Gosh!

The IASA are a disgrace. Whatever stand you take on Michelle Smith/de Bruin, the IASA's handling of the issue has been two-faced, inappropriate, dishonourable and expediency driven. For these and other reasons too depressing to go into on a Monday morning the IASA should be disbanded and started anew.

And Postman Chalkie? He has been in the business of shooting the messenger for so long now that he can hardly complain if . . .