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Mr. Swimming for the Olympics
You can find me the next couple of weeks at the swimming pool in Sydney, Australia. I am Mr. Swimming for the 2000 Olympics, thank you very much. It should be an easy job, covering swimming, because the U.S. is good and the Australians are good and the pool is going to be rocking with 18,000 spectators and the records and the human interest stories are going to come rolling off a wet production line. The only catch is ... well, the only catch is how many of those human interest stories can we believe. Who's cheating? Who's not? Who's lying? Who's not? I cringe already, just thinking about it all. No other sport is filled with more charges and counter-charges, more suspicions. The drug-enhanced legacy of the East Germans hangs over every great performance, especially by women. You talk to the latest sensation and she gushes and cries and it all is quite lovely ... and five feet away the gossip already has begun. What is she taking? Look at her shoulders. Look at her back. Look. Is that normal? In the absence of hard evidence, who can prove anything about anyone? Innuendo and skepticism prevail. The final results never are final. Was Michelle Smith, the pride of Ireland and the swim star in 1996 at Atlanta, as pure and wonderful as she seemed? Well, in the long run, apparently not. Will there be a Michelle Smith in these Games? Who will she be? Will we ever find out for sure? How? It all is a mess. Mr. Swimming wishes he were Mr. Baseball.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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