Smith finds mission impossible

World records on tap? Not just yet. AT the National Swimming Championships yesterday, in front of a surprisingly muted Belfast congregation, the highly publicised intentions of the high priestess of Irish swimming, Michelle Smith, to take another quantum leap from gold medal territory into a world record nirvana were put on hold.

Her decision to compete in next month's European Championships in Seville is also on ice after yesterday's effort to break Mary T Meagher's 1981 world record of two minutes 5.65 seconds in the 200 metres butterfly fell over two seconds short at two minutes 8.15 seconds.

The Dubliner must now take comfort from her three Olympic gold medals, one bronze, two European titles and the fact that she holds every Irish record in every stroke - bar the breast stroke. The fee from her sponsors TNT may also ease the smarting.

"I'm disappointed about tonight's swim," she said. "Training was going very well, so I expected to swim faster. I thought that I had it in me to do a bit better.

"The race felt quite good, but it was the second 100 metres that really let me down. I didn't die, but my speed just wasn't fast enough.

"I wouldn't have attempted it without having a good shot of getting it and actually, I felt fine after the initial 100 metres. At the first 50-metre mark it was perfect and at the second 50 metres, I was only two tenths of a second out. The last part, I didn't go fast enough."

Not since chairman of the boards, Eamon Coghlan, and world 5,000 metres track champion Sonia O'Sullivan has any Irish athlete dipped their toe into the unpredictable pool of world record attempts.

It was Smith's first time expressly to do so and draped in her now famous black, long-john style swimsuit, she looked every inch the swimmer who transfixed the crowds at Georgia Tech in Atlanta last summer.

Rather than simply win races - which she did with some distance to spare over second-placed Sally Herlihy-Smith - she may have now inadvertently primed the public to raise their expectations to a stratospheric level.

Before the last European Championships in Austria in 1985, she had swum the same event in two minutes 7.61 seconds, just half a second outside the European record set by East German Ines Geissler in 1982.

Smith then went on to take a medal in the same event at the end of a hard European competition. Where she goes from here in terms of the European championships will be decided over the next week. No doubt, her consideration will involve the fact that the short course season ended last April. The European Championships in Seville will be held in a 50-metre pool.

Undaunted by the Mission Impossible music that had, like some premonition, been blasted out as the first song of the final session of swimming at the Grove Baths, Smith, finally, preferred to stick to reasoned analysis in her summing up.

"I wasn't aware that the race was going to be a 2:08.0 time, but I was aware that as I tried to move up another gear, it became that bit more difficult. I suppose now I have to sit down with Eric this evening and talk about what I think of the race and where we go from here in my training.

"We have to try and work out why it didn't go as well as we thought it might go - I don't think it's because I'm not fit enough. It could be that I haven't yet had enough top-class racing. "There are a number of things to consider and if it's just that I haven't had enough competition, then maybe this race might help me - and no, I didn't hear the music."

Smith went out over the first 50 metres in 29:01.00 seconds and by the first turn was over a length ahead of the field. At the 110metre mark she turned in 1:01.22 seconds and by 150 metres had clocked 1:34.10. But the final surge was not in evidence and taking over 34 seconds for the final 50 metres, the record was well out of sight.

"If it is something small. If it is something we can work out over the next few weeks, then I don't think it's going to be a problem." The Europeans are still a guessing game.