Michelle had thrashed the American sweetheart, Janet Evans, in front of her own crowd. Evans squealed like a child before the slavering home media. How could Michelle have improved so much without artificial help, she wanted to know. Patrick Hickey, a member of the IOC and president of the Olympic Committee of Ireland, accused the Americans of "Uncle Samism". The one Yank who loved her, Bill Clinton, with his Irish-American hat on, told Michelle to pay no heed to the whisperers who doubted her startling improvement. The dramatic change in her swimming had begun in 1993, a year after she met De Bruin, a middling and dodgy discus thrower and shot putter from Holland. Her times were slashed - at the advanced age of 25 - and her shoulders broadened. Just as well, given what was to be heaped on them later.

Before Atlanta, a couple of Irish writers were uncomfortable about the rumours, but people were reluctant to listen. One editor refused to print the misgivings of one of his sceptical columnists. Nevertheless, the acclamation afterwards was as loud as it was long. There would not be enough shopping malls in the Republic for St Michelle to open on her return to Dublin. The president was there to shake her hand when she stepped off the plane on to the red carpet. The Pope hardly got a better reception.

Michelle was pretty, intelligent and humble, and the community in south Dublin where she grew up, notably the patrons of her family's local, the Poitin Still in Rathcoole, were her most fervent admirers. Their sponsorship in a country that did not even have a 50-metre Olympic pool was crucial. Pictures of her hung on the wall. However, Michelle was about to fall from the giddy heights of transient celebrity.

Two months or so ago at Kellsgrange, a grand establishment in a village outside Kilkenny, the De Bruins might have spared a thought for the irony of their situation, and how events have again twisted against them.

There she was with all her new legal qualifications from University College, Dublin; and he had been in court in Waterford two days before. Erik pleaded guilty to having driven without reasonable consideration for other road users at Mullinavat, County Kilkenny, on September 23 last year. That was three months after his conviction for shoplifting - in the same court before the same judge. S ix Januaries back, on the very weekend a Chinese swimmer was caught smuggling human growth hormone into Australia for the world championships, the dope testers came calling at Kellsgrange. They took urine samples from the uncrowned Queen of Ireland. The royal wee was later found to have been contaminated.

She was horrified. So was Ireland. Janet Evans was less perturbed. But Michelle had survived the Olympics unsullied, and had passed blood tests at the 1997 European titles, where she won two gold and two silver. Now, out of competition, she was being targeted again, and accused of fixing her sample. She called the first of several news conferences.

Minutes before she began to read from an 11-page prepared statement, her legal representative, Peter Lennon, received news from swimming's international governing body. The testers had found something else in her urine: traces of a metabolic precursor of testosterone. Mrs De Bruin, as she had become, was defiant. "I am innocent of these charges,' she said. "I am appalled at the manner in which they have been leaked into the public domain and I intend fully defending them, if necessary, all the way to the International Sports Court in Switzerland." Because of a change in the sample's specific gravity between her bathroom at Kellsgrange and the laboratory, the swimmer maintained any tampering was done in the testing room in Barcelona, where they reported the sample emitted "a very strong whisky odour".

There was enough alcohol in her urine for her to be a journalist, never mind a solicitor. Realistically, plans to take her case through the courts had been irretrievably undermined. Her appeal was not upheld. She quit her fight for redemption. What has happened subsequently is the sad but inevitable dismantling of a legend. The glow has gone. It had been going for a little while.

"I remember how alone she always seemed to be when she was in the studio," recalled a member of the production team on the TV show she fronted in the summer of 1997. "She did not often engage you in eye contact. If you spoke to her, she would always defer to Erik, who would be standing nearby. "It was obvious she did everything through him. Then, at the end of the week, he did something very odd. He would collect all the sandwiches that had been left over and take them home. "She did 10 episodes and I never really got to know her. The program was among the best in the ratings. Although she was very wooden, it was obvious she tried so hard to do it well. You could see why she was so good at what she did."

The drugs slur derailed the Michelle Smith-De Bruin caravan forever. Sponsors fled. She retreated to her lovely house, refusing all offers of interviews, which still trickle in. Michelle's supporters are loyal beyond question. Their number is less certain. A friend of long standing says her studies have given her a focus that was taken away when she stopped swimming. "There comes a point when there's nothing more to say on the subject. But she is still firmly convinced of her innocence. We don't talk about it now, though."

Another good friend unwittingly ignited the debate before Christmas, however. Jimmy Magee is known as the Memory Man for his ability to rattle off football teams, scores and old stories. Few know more about Irish sport. So, in compiling a video entitled Jimmy Magee's Greatest Sporting Memories, Vol. 1, he will have known that including Michelle's swimming feats alongside the heroics of Stephen Roche, Eamon Coghlan, D.J. Carey and Ray Houghton would stir the critics. Michelle came to the launch, her first public appearance in a long time. Afterwards, she would withdraw again, clinging to anonymity as best she could.

Tom Humphries, writing in the Irish Times, reflected a widespread cynicism. He had no time for her defence that she had won her Olympic medals cleanly and honestly, and that the tampering allegations came much later. Nor did he have much time for Magee's mythologising. Michelle's father, Brian, told a radio program in December that, although Magee was a personal friend, friendship had nothing to do with including his daughter on the video.

"I'm absolutely shocked that somebody should criticise somebody like Jimmy Magee," Mr Smith said. "This man is a national treasure, he's an icon." Humphries, one of Ireland's best iconoclasts, described the broadcast to me as "poignant". It was. Mr Smith said he had never directly asked his daughter about the allegations but said: "If I thought for one minute that Michelle had taken drugs, I wouldn't support her. All my life I've been an opponent of people taking drugs. I saw how people went down the tubes from taking drugs. I instilled into all of my family honesty. "Michelle trained like nobody else trained. On the very day that Michelle got married, in Holland, she trained before the ceremony, came back, went to bed, went back and trained for another two hours, then went off again. On her wedding day. Does that sound like somebody who's using drugs as a supplement?"

Unfortunately, it does. It is understandable that a father, blind to the weaknesses of his daughter, might not appreciate that it is the drugs that fuel the training. They talk occasionally. But when De Bruin was convicted of shoplifting, they communicated only by e-mail. "I was shocked," he said.

Whatever her troubles, her father is convinced that Michelle still has the love and trust of the Irish. A few people tell him they think she took drugs and he appreciates their frankness, but, he says, "the rest of the country are behind Michelle, that's 99.9 per cent totally believe that Michelle was innocent and that she won her events fairly". In the same breath, he concedes she has been airbrushed from Irish history. She is not mentioned in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia of Ireland. Nor is her name among the records of Ireland's Community Games. Smith asked why and was told that Dublin voted for her but "in most of the rest of Ireland they voted against". And what of Ireland's sporting administrators? They have gone from embarrassed to coy in quick time. The Olympic champion runner John Treacy is now chief executive of the Irish Sports Council. "Will you give me half an hour or so to think about this?" he said when asked what Michelle de Bruin's legacy was.

On reflection, he says: "My position is that we have moved on. The legacy would be that we now have a very good anti-doping policy in place." Another senior official said: "It has disappeared from the national psyche. It's very hard to say how she is regarded now. If she had come forward and admitted it, if she had said she was sorry, people would have admired her courage and I'm sure they would forgive her. Irish people are very forgiving."

They also have long memories. They would find it odd for Michelle to plead culpable innocence so many years after the event. In a way, she is best left in peace, behind her former directory number and the forbidding gates at Kellsgrange. She still swims. Most mornings, she coaches kids at the Kilkenny Community Centre. It is just a shame. She was the best thing to happen to Ireland in a long time, and among the worst. You would hope people will be adult enough to employ her as a barrister despite the cloud over her that looks as fixed as a painting.

- Observer