People think that Olympic medallists are rolling in it but it just isn’t the case. My fear is that we’ll go to Sydney, not do as well as we are expected to do and everyone will wonder why the money’s been spent. It is why he has continued with a sport that, despite lottery money, barely rewards its athletes.”I’m probably worse off than I was before,” he said. “I get one big grant now, whereas before I had three or four. But knowing that gold could have been his is why he goes in the pool every morning.

The long chase, as the leader was slowly but not completely reeled in, and the race for silver, made it one of the best races in the Georgia Tech Aquatic Centre.Time has brought a sense of proportion with it, and Smith concedes that if he had to be finger-tipped away from a place it was better to have not been so close to gold or to have been pipped for a medal at all. By 500 I knew the gold medal was his unless he blew up completely.” That jolt, plus the effort of trying to chase Perkins, meant that Smith was pipped for silver by 500th of a second by another Australian, Dan Kowalski. The Australian is the double Olympic champion at 1,500 metres and his world record is 20 seconds faster than anyone else has ever covered the distance, but at Atlanta he only just qualified for the final in last place.He was hardly out of Smith’s mind – “when he got through I thought `Oh, no, you can never count this guy out of it’” – but he was out of sight in lane eight and had established a race-winning lead before the supposedly faster swimmers in the centre were aware of him.”It wasn’t until the turn at 400 metres that I noticed, `Oh God he’s so far ahead’. My friends told me I looked like I was going to hit Sharron Davies when she interviewed me for the BBC afterwards.”It was only when I got back to Manchester Airport arrivals lounge and all my friends started cheering that it struck me that I’d done anything impressive.

It’s other people who make you realise what you’ve done.”The reason why Smith was furious with himself was Kieren Perkins. I’m proud that I was among only 15 or 16 Britons who got a medal but at the time I was gutted. He thought he would be when he entered the pool for the final in Atlanta and he still believes he should be now.”People ask me if I was happy with the bronze and looking back I suppose I am. It is not beyond the realms of possibility, either, that he might arrive at the 2000 Games as the world champion courtesy of his work in Perth next week.The World Championships began on Wednesday – though the swimming programme itself does not start until Monday – and Smith and Paul Palmer, the two medallists in Atlanta, remain the country’s bright prospects.