As putdowns go, it falls some way short of Dorothy Parker, and even by sporting standards it comes nowhere close to what Australians are used to absorbing on a cricket field. “We will smash them like guitars” was American Gary Hall Jr’s prediction for the 4 x 100m relay at the Sydney Olympics, where an Australian quartet hoped to end the US dominance of what had become the blue-riband event of the blue-riband sport — through home eyes, at any rate — of the 2000 Games. Never mind Cathy Freeman, swimming was what counted most to Australians as they welcomed the world. For swimming matters Down Under. And then some.
Hall must have thought himself on safe ground when it came to the freestyle relay, scheduled to round off the first day of competition in the pool. Since the event was introduced at the 1964 Olympics there had only been one winner, and the team that touched down in Australia was fancied to maintain this record, especially with Hall, one of the great sprinters, to swim the last leg.
At first glance the muscular Ohian, with his easy smile, blond hair and blue eyes, was the archetypal All-American. But he was a colourful figure. He had served a ban for marijuana use, was prone to posturing and had advanced the idea to some of his teammates that they should not be shy of stirring controversy, as it could only help promote the sport.
By the time Hall and the rest of the US team left the holding room beneath the stands to move out into the arena at Homebush Bay, the atmosphere was fevered. Swathes of gold and green filled the stand that ran down one side of the pool; the heat from 17,500 shoe-horned spectators was intense, adding to the febrile feeling as waves of noise bounced back off the roof and crashed on to the swimmers as they made their way to the blocks.
Leading the Australian team was a 17-year-old already on the way to becoming his nation’s darling and one of their greatest sportsmen. Less than an hour earlier, Ian Thorpe had won the 400m freestyle to claim the first of a career return of five Olympic gold medals. The tall teenager from Sydney had been a national figure since the age of 14 and came to wider attention a year later when he became a world champion in the 400m in Perth in 1998.
“I was thinking that this little bugger should be back at school learning how the Romans conquered the Greeks,” recalled Grant Hackett, another Australian great, of the moment Thorpe had swept past him to win that first title. No man — or boy — had won world gold at a younger age.
At the Commonwealth Games in Malaysia later that year he took four golds, well and truly launching himself into the international limelight. “You can’t believe he’s 15. It’s genetics gone bloody crazy,” said Don Talbot, the Australian coach.
A year later Thorpe broke the first of his 22 world records, in the 400m, and he began the Olympics under enormous pressure to live up to spiralling hype. The 400m was his No 1 event and he never looked in danger. Clad in a black bodysuit, he pulled away from the field from the moment he broke the surface. His easy, languid stroke allied to the propeller power of his size-17 feet kept taking him further ahead, and when he touched at the end of his eighth length, the world record had been shaved of more than half a second. Thorpe looked heavenwards and mouthed a thank you. “It’s a gift,” he said later. The spectators roared their delight. Twenty minutes later he was on top of an Olympic podium for the first time. He would be back.
It took four helpers and 10 minutes to get him back into his swimsuit. There was barely time to catch his breath before Thorpe, with the lolloping gait of any over-sized teenager still to acclimatise to a growing frame, joined his teammates, Michael Klim, Ashley Callus and Chris Fydler, to make the nerve-tingling walk along the side of the pool to the accompaniment of thousands of impassioned voices bellowing out the unofficial Aussie anthem, Men at Work’s Down Under.
In a masterstroke, Talbot promoted a pumped-up Klim to swim the first leg. The 23-year-old stormed away from Anthony Ervin and came home in 48.18sec. “You broke the world record,” Thorpe yelled as he waited for his turn. “Are you sure?” asked a shocked Klim. There was no time for Thorpe to convince his colleague. Fydler, now a qualified lawyer working in Sydney, and Callus, who won his latest gold at the world short-course championships in April this year, held off Neil Walker and Jason Lezak, but the Americans were closing and Thorpe hit the water only fractions before Hall.
A giant scoreboard filled one end of the complex on which the times were instantly displayed as the swimmers touched. Hall touched first at the end of length one. For a moment the crowd were silenced. But only for a moment. The Australian began to close the gap as they raced down the final length, swept along by waves of sound.
Side by side they entered the final 10m before, at the very last, Thorpe snaked out a long arm and Australia had gold. The world record was theirs, too, in 3min 13.67sec, a new mark by almost 1.5 seconds. The US finished a blink behind in 3:13.86. “I didn’t see the scoreboard, didn’t see the crowd,” said Thorpe, “but I knew to react. I would’ve felt like a fool if I’d been wrong, but I knew to react.” The Polish-born Klim, who last year married a Balinese princess and now mixes swimming with modelling underwear, knew how to react, too, and began to strum flamboyantly at an imaginary guitar. Soon his teammates and most of the stadium were accompanying him.
“I don’t even know how to play the guitar,” Hall said ruefully. But he was gracious in defeat: “I consider it the best relay race I’ve ever been part of. I doff my cap to the great Ian Thorpe. He swum better than I did.”
Hall had his moment later in the meet, sharing 50m freestyle gold with Ervin (Thorpe won another gold and shared in another world record in the 4 x 200m relay) as the American men topped the swimming medals table. After the Games, Hall dropped out of the sport for three years, but returned in triumph to defend his 50m title in Athens. Thorpe won two more golds there, defending his 400m crown and then seeing off Pieter van den Hoogenband and Michael Phelps to win the 200m in a contest casually dubbed the “race of the century”.
But Thorpe’s favourite Olympic race remained that relay on a raucous evening in home water before his own kind. By Athens, his focus may well have already started to drift away from the pool. He was a rich man and had his own brands of underwear, toiletries and drinks, as well as lucrative sponsorship deals. Then there was a small role in Friends, trips to Japan, where he was a cult figure, and more and more time spent in the US.
It was in mid-afternoon last Sunday that he finally reached the decision that Australia had been steeling itself for. He had had enough. He had had enough of getting up at 4.17am — the latest he could leave his bed to be in the pool by 4.30 — as he had been doing for the past decade. He had even had enough of breaking world records. “I started to look at myself not just as a swimmer, but as a person,” he said as he announced his decision to retire, an event that knocked the Ashes on to the back pages.
It brought to a close a career that glittered with 11 world golds, 10 Commonwealth golds and 20 Australian titles and left him as his nation’s most decorated Olympian, with five golds, three silvers and a bronze from two Games. The tributes were glowing — an “inspiration”, said Phelps, Thorpe’s successor as swimming’s star — but perhaps none more so than from an old adversary.
“He’s as talented a swimmer as we’ve seen,” said Gary Hall Jr. “I regard Ian Thorpe as a lot more talented than me.”
