TRIPLE Olympic gold medallist Michelle Smith was reported at the weekend to have reconsidered her earlier decision to skip this year's European swimming Championships in Seville.

The Dubliner had stated that she would take a year away from serious competition before returning to action at the World Championships in Australia at the start of 1998 but in an interview published in The Title yesterday it is stated that she does intend to compete in Spain in September.

Elsewhere in the interview Smith criticises the way she has been treated by sections of the Irish media including The Irish Times and Independent Group newspapers since her victories in Atlanta.

Smith claims that she has been drug tested twice over the last month but says that a number of journalists have created a situation in which "I have to prove my innocence. There are those," she adds, "throwing mud in my direction with no evidence and no respite."

The swimmer, who will be in Dublin this weekend to receive the Ballygowan-sponsored Irish Sports Personality of the Year award, said that the number of tests she had undergone over, the past year proves that she is clean, remarking that "every time I undergo a test and the result is negative it proves that I am clean, it proves how wrong these people are."