At the 1996 Olympics, Michelle Smith seemed to cause a major splash in the pool by winning three golds and a bronze at the games.
But the ripples from that Games did not end there as two years later the Dublin-born 46-year-old received a ban for tampering with a urine sample.
Smith had not been on the radar of USA swimmer Allison Wagner in 1996. Indeed, as she she told Newstalk's Ger Gilroy at Web Summit in Lisbon, she only became aware of her Irish opponent on the first day of the Games.
"She wasn't on many people's radar because she had chopped so much time in the event and she had changed so much that nobody on the American team, at least, was aware of her. I know some people had spent a lot of time training or competing in Europe in the last year before the Olympics who knew of her. But I certainly didn't," she said of a race in which Smith beat her to the gold medal by just under three seconds.
However, before the deciding race, Wagner did become aware of Smith through the rubric of her behaviour in the ready-room.
"She made a point of coming up to me in the ready-room and for some reason she thought it might be a good idea to grunt and jump up and down right in front of me," she said.
Michelle Smith with her three swimming gold medals on July 25th 1996 ©INPHO/Billy Stickland
"So I was aware of her in the moment and I just thought 'Oh God, not another roid rage person!'"
However, Wagner did not rise to that and had been in confident mood ahead of competing.
"When the race happens, I do what I had done prior, which is to prepare to do my best and prepare my body and prepare my mind to the best of my ability and training leading up to that point had gone pretty well," she said.
"So I was prepared to have a good race and it was on home turf. The Atlanta Olympics was near my hometown and that was exciting. So I swim the race and at the breaststroke point, I was ahead in the 400 individual medley and then Michelle overtook me and then it was me and Krisztina Egerszegi battling it out for the silver. And I did what I was pretty good at which is touching people out. So I did that and I felt pretty good about that.
"After I got out of the pool, Krisztina Egerszegi came up to me and said 'Congrats, you're the real winner of this race'. That felt nice on a personal level because I had no friendship with her but I certainly respected her a lot and she had accomplished so much and really seemed like a stand-up person - somebody who valued sportswomanship and integrity."
In terms of the repercussions of not winning gold, Wagner said it "made a big difference" on her personally.
"I really sacrificed so many things,In the swimming world, nobody would argue I put in more time than anybody else in that time-frame," she said, explaining that among the litany of consequences it meant she couldn't take the extended break she needed to, as well as losing her college scholarship and feeling the cost financially just to name a few.
"So I lost my college scholarship, I lost my break and the chance to reassess my life and I also lost my faith that hard work really paid off."
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