Olympic legend Janet Evans on Michelle Smith, Muhammad Ali, Atlanta and the swimmers to watch in Paris
Smith de Bruin has always denied taking performance-enhancing drugs and still has her medals, but they were forever tarnished when she received a four-year ban for tampering with a urine sample in 1998.
Janet Evans wouldn’t change a thing about Atlanta. She was the marquee USA swimming star going into the 1996 Olympic Games and the athlete who memorably passed the torch to Muhammad Ali to light the cauldron at the opening ceremony. A few days later she was at the centre of an Irish media storm.
“Irish people are nice to me again, so that’s good!” she says, smiling. “I wasn’t the most favourite of Irish people when it came to Michelle.”
The Michelle in question is Michelle Smith de Bruin, the Irish swimmer who won three golds and a bronze in the Atlanta pool. But there were questions about her training techniques and astonishing improvement between Barcelona 1992 and the 1996 Games. Evans spoke about it at a press conference in Atlanta and all hell broke loose.
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“As an athlete, it’s something you always think about,” she says. “And having swam against the East Germans...we just didn’t talk about it then.
“I think that was what so shocking about the Michelle Smith piece was that I actually said something. So that’s really what triggered the whole thing.”
Smith de Bruin has always denied taking performance-enhancing drugs and still has her medals, but they were forever tarnished when she received a four-year ban for tampering with a urine sample in 1998.
“It was just at a time when you didn’t say things,” adds Evans. “And so having lived through time and the suspicion and the whispers, I think what served me the best was thinking about my training, thinking about what I done.
“Personally for me, I couldn’t think about what the authorities were doing. Who is blood testing and drug testing who?
“I had to think about me and my races and about what my training did to get me on that moment.”
Evans won three golds at Seoul ’88 as a 17-year-old and added another gold in Barcelona four years later.
By the time of Atlanta 1996 she was a global superstar, transcending the sport and expected to shine on home soil.
Instead, she left the Games without a medal after being at the eye of a storm that stretched all the way to the White House.
“For all that happened in Atlanta between the issues with Michelle and I didn’t swim very well in Atlanta — but Atlanta is still my favourite Games,” she says.
“It’s where I passed the torch to Ali, it’s where I announced my retirement, it’s where I learned a lot about myself and who I was turning into outside of my swimming career.
“Atlanta to me was a huge learning curve in many personal ways. I think that storyline was just a part of it. Life always throws you a curveball and I think a lot of being successful is how you deal with it.
“It was definitely the defining moment of my career, it taught me a lot about standing up as you are.
“Whether you’re Ali and not doing as well as you used to, but standing in front of a billion people and lighting the Olympic cauldron — it took a lot of grit and determination.
“We’re not always going to be perfect, but he taught me that night that we’ve just got to get out there and stand up and do our best, that’s something I really carry with me.
“It was life-changing. So I really wouldn’t change anything about Atlanta.”
The build-up to the swimming at this year’s Olympics has been overshadowed by the recent Chinese doping scandal, but Evans believes the US team will be focused on their own performances.
“I think some of it starts — as an athlete — to become noise,” she explains. “Because you can’t control that. That’s up for all us retired talking heads to talk and wonder about it, but as an athlete, they need to put blinders on and focus on their races.”
Evans is in Paris this week to observe the Games in her role as Chief Athlete Officer for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, where she will be tasked with looking after the needs of over 15,000 athletes.
She will be at the swimming in the coming days and knows the task facing Daniel Wiffen in the 800m and 1,500m men’s freestyle.
The Armagh man is hoping to take Ireland’s first Olympic medal in the pool since Smith de Bruin in Atlanta, but Evans believes USA’s Bobby Finke — reigning champ in both events — will be hard to beat.
“I know (Wiffen’s) in the hunt,” she says. “For us with Bobby, he’s a veteran, he’s a defending Olympic champion now. He’s going to be tough, but I think it depends on how he’s swimming.
“It kind of depends on who wants it the most — who has the most grit in those races.”
Wiffen will also likely face US newcomer Luke Whitlock in the 800m freestyle, and Evans has been impressed by the teenage sensation.
“Whitlock is young, I watched him in the trials, he’s hungry,” says Evans. “I think our men’s team does have a lot of young talent. Thomas Heilman, one of our 200 butterflies is a rising senior in high school, so they’re young.
“They’re teenagers and that’s the question, as a teenager at the Olympic Games, kind of thrown into this — how do you deal with the pressure? So I think this is a test for our young swimmers.”
Evans believes Katie Ledecky and Regan Smith will shine once again for the US women’s squad when the action gets underway in the pool tomorrow.
At LA in 2028, swimming and athletics will switch positions in the schedule for the first time with track-and-field kicking off the Games and the pool providing the big finale.
Getting that change across the line wasn’t easy.
“I think there’s some technicalities in the switch that seemed hard to scale, but I think we got through them,” she says.
“Swimming is going to be fantastic in LA. Track and field in the Coliseum is going to be amazing — the first stadium in history to hold three different Olympic track and field competitions.
“I think everyone is going to adapt and it’s going to be worth it in the end.”
Evans will be cheering Team USA in the pool this week, but will be happy to see the tricolour go up after a trip around the Irish coast left a lasting impression on her.
“I was pregnant with my second child and we literally drove around all of Ireland and ended up in Dublin,” she says.
“It was delightful, we loved it.”
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