Sideline Cut:It is tough for the sport of swimming to breach the global headlines in the years between Olympiads, but the decision by Australia's Ian Thorpe to retire from the water lit up the wires in all the major newsrooms and broadcast centres across the globe this week. For most of us locked into the habitual grind of another day, another dollar, Thorpe's typically polished and dignified farewell at the age of 24 (!) might well have brought the automatic response: nice work if you can get it.
But it also illuminated the strange, almost reclusive nature of swimming and the fate of its desperately youthful stars whose very existence seems to revolve around the fleeting and irrevocable glory of those all-important seconds when they will swim the race of races in a pool decorated by the five Olympic circles.
Thorpe has been the embodiment of the weird, transitory fame bestowed upon the tiny percentage of elite swimmers whose star, through a confluence of insanely dedicated training and probably some small measure of good fortune, dominates the first week of the Olympic summers. Thorpe's unprecedented rise to become the dominant icon in his sport was undoubtedly boosted by the happy and coincidental arrival of the great Olympic circus in his home city of Sydney and the fact those games had a magical aura about them. Thorpe was only turning 18 years of age then, but for anyone in Sydney during those three weeks in September, it was clear he was Australia's First Person, already a national hero and the athlete in whom the hugely enthusiastic and expectant home-town fans had invested emotional faith. Even before he lined up for his first race, Thorpe behaved with the composure and decorum of those rare sportsmen who seem born with an innate understanding that all the hours of learning and a childhood dominated by an adult application and devotion would lead to this moment. Personable and photogenic, with a pearly-white smile, he was the perfect poster boy for the robust and enviable sense of sunny health that seemed the birthright of all Australians that summer. And he was stable enough and clearly well-enough supported to cash in, dominating the city billboards throughout the games.
And whereas Mexico 1968 had the solemn and inflammatory image of Tommie Smith and Jon Carlos delivering the Black Panther salute and Seoul in 1988 has now been distilled to the bleak, jaundiced expression of Ben Johnson streaking with unimaginable speed and power through the Korean heat, the Sydney Olympics have been branded by Thorpe's shadowy magic, a lithe figure in an all-black body suit tearing up records and racking up gold medals in front of a hugely appreciative and proud home crowd.
As ever, allegations of substance abuse clouded many of the gold-medal performers who appeared during that first week, but insinuations were never directed at Thorpe, who was celebrated as a wunderkind. On the opening night, he duly swept to gold in his specialist event, the 400-metre freestyle, but it was his gripping duel in the anchor leg of the four-by-100-metre relay against the American legend Gary Hall jr which made that hot, cavernous pool feel like the centre of the earth. It was a race pure and simple - joyous and exciting and gallant and easy to understand - and it kick-started a feeling of goodwill that endured throughout the games and made even cynical observers, weary of so many Olympic scandals and betrayals, believe that maybe there was something worth cheering after all.
The Thorpedo, as he was christened, was hardly an overnight sensation, having written his name into the record books at the ridiculously young age of 15. He had star quality and you didn't have to be able to swim a single length to appreciate the unearthly grace and comfort with which he moved through the water.
In Athens two years ago, the few of us lucky enough to draw tickets in the IOC lottery to witness the "race of the century", the 200-metre freestyle final featuring Thorpe, the Dutch speed merchant Pieter van den Hoogenband and the young American sensation Michael Phelps, turned up at the swimming pool good and early. The arena was open-air and never felt as emotionally explosive as those nights in Sydney four years earlier.
In many Olympic events, however, medals are won with such bewildering frequency and in so many obscure sports it is often hard to fully understand the significance, beyond the obvious national pride. But it was clear the man who took this gold medal was walking away with one of the marquee medals of the games and in the days and hours leading up to the final, there was heavy talk of history in the making.
Phelps, a gangly, uncomplicated and likeable Midwesterner, was the hot shot around the water that summer, his value soaring on the slickly marketed bid to eclipse Mark Spitz's monumental record of seven gold medals set in 1972. And odd as it seems, Thorpe seemed an elder statesman at those games and was completely empathetic towards Phelps and the phenomenal scrutiny his every move attracted.
Thorpe won that most coveted of races in a masterful, riveting race that seemed to last much longer than the minute and 47 seconds it took to complete. Like all Olympic swimming finals, it was noisy and hectically energetic, and afterwards the athletes emerged from the water soaked and resplendent and heroic and tip-toed across the glassy tiles, all smiles and waves for the flag-waving crowds. And you can only begin to imagine the endless dawn mornings each had spent in his parents' car being driven to the local pool for grimly repetitious laps, hundreds of thousands of them, month after month. All for this shiny mirage and maybe a place on the podium.
Downstairs, wearing jeans and a white woollen sweater and his gold medal, Thorpe was the epitome of class in victory.
Thorpe, of course, took three other medals from Athens, including gold at an event he was highly fortunate to be contesting. He had made a mess of his 400-metre freestyle race in the Australian national championships, earning disqualification as he slipped on entering the water. The intervention of his compatriot Craig Stevens, who on national television surrendered his 400-metre spot, helped the Thorpedo amass his Australian record of nine Olympic swimming medals.
Although he spoke in Athens of future races, Thorpe was no longer the boy sensation thrilled at his own ability, and it was hard that night to imagine him lasting until Beijing, where he would, by swimming standards, be an old man of the pool.
Thorpe might have broken more world records in the future but as he admitted this week, that prospect no longer consumed him as it once did. In one of those strange quirks of fate, Thorpe was in New York exactly a year after his spellbinding feats in Sydney and, after a morning run, he stopped outside the World Trade Centre and decided to pop back to his hotel for his camera so he could take some photographs from the vantage points at the top of the landmark. Before he could return, the towers were burning. He never said being close to that epochal moment scarred or changed him, beyond prompting him to count his blessings and not delay things he wanted to do.
But it might have contributed to the arrival at this point, where he has decided that just because he can move through water with more speed and grace than almost all other human beings is not a good-enough reason to keep on doing it. Thorpe might be one of the few sporting heavyweights of our time who has managed to leave his stage with the same poise and effortless style with which he swam towards immortality.
