IAN THORPE, it might be said, has decided to put his career on ice. The record-breaking Australian swimmer will miss the World Championships in Montreal this year and take a season off from competition in order to be in prime condition for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008.
“This year, Ian won’t be standing up to race at world titles, which is going to be hard for the Australian team and hard for his team-mates — but it’s something he needs to do in preparation for Beijing,” Tracey Menzies, Thorpe’s coach, said yesterday in Sydney.
“It is going to be a hard path for him to get himself back in shape, but it’s not something he would do if he didn’t think he was capable of coming back. It is good that he has had a bit of a break and time to grow as a person.”
Thorpe’s fitness levels have dropped considerably since the Athens Games last year, not that he has stopped his promotional schedule. One of his most recent obligations involved a visit to St Moritz, known not so much for its water sports as its frozen water sports, in his capacity of fronting advertisements for Omega, the Swiss watchmaker. Thorpe, though, is not a man who blends in with the St Moritz set; it is a little difficult when you are 6ft 5in, have shoulders and a back the size of a whale’s and size-17 feet.
But the facts about Thorpe are well known. He went on to win three Olympic golds at the age of 17 in Sydney. Two more golds in Athens made him Australia’s most successful Olympian. All that has engendered jealousy and awe at his achievements. In the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics, the Germany team said that Thorpe had taken a growth hormone to make his feet larger.
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Thorpe is tired of this. “I don’t think that’s fair because I train way too hard for that,” he said. “I do too many hours for that to be why I have done well. And you know what? There is nobody else in world swimming who looks anything like me. My body type is not suited to swimming, it’s quite the opposite.
“At the Australian Institute of Sport, we have tests for things we can do; how fast you can run, how high you can jump, what your resting heart-rate is. Out of the machine it will spit out what you should do. It told me I should be either a rower or a rugby player.”
Michael Phelps, Thorpe’s American rival, apparently does have physiological advantages. He has only size-14 feet, but an armspan of 6ft 7in, unusually three inches more than his height. His level of lactic acid, which causes muscles to tire, has been measured to be phenomenally low, allowing him a quick recovery time. That made it possible for him to attempt in Athens to beat Mark Spitz’s record of seven golds at an Olympics.
It was Thorpe who stopped him equalling the record by winning the 200 metres freestyle, as Phelps faded to third. Before Athens, Thorpe said that Spitz would not be matched and he repeats the opinion here without mentioning Phelps. Perhaps Thorpe is irked by the presumptuousness of Phelps, two years his junior, and the Americans, who stole most of the headlines with the record attempt.
Thorpe seems a little world-weary. He is 22 and occasionally sounds like someone who feels that he has been pleasing other people all his career (“No one is to judge my performance,” he said). He has grown up in a goldfish bowl and his sexuality has been the source of many column inches. The innuendo cannot have been easy to deal with.
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Thorpe has chosen mostly to keep silent and says that he will not be leaving Australia to escape. “Whatever negative things and however much attention and publicity and press, I look at my lifestyle, the people round me, my friends, what I get to do on the weekends and I still enjoy it more than whatever those pains may be,” he said. “I spend most of my time in my home in Sydney and intend to spend most of my time there in the next four years.”
The aim of his sabbatical is to keep him fresh for Beijing. “I need a rest. Look at me now and you can tell I need a rest,” he said. “I’ve had a rest and I still need a rest.”
Menzies said that Thorpe was unlikely to satisfy his own high standards with the Australia trials weeks away and only three weeks of training under his belt since Athens. There has been some concern in Australia that Thorpe might do a Cathy Freeman and not want to come back, but Alexander Popov, the former Olympic champion from Russia, who had a couple of breaks in his career, does not think he will have a problem. “It’s not very difficult to come back,” Popov said. “I experienced three or four days going down to hell and then was back. If he can manage it, he will be even better.”