Ian Thorpe's Olympic dream ends, after failing to make the 100m freestyle semi-finals
- From: The Australian
- March 18, 2012
It's not the end of Ian Thorpe. It's just the end of the beginning.
Australia's greatest Olympian is not abandoning his comeback and will swim on, despite failing in his attempt to qualify for the London Games.
Within an hour of seeing his dream of competing in London abruptly terminated this morning when he failed to qualify for the semi-finals tonight of the 100m freestyle, Thorpe was telling a packed press conference at the Olympic trials in Adelaide that the reasons he began his comeback still apply.
"When I started this I wanted to get back in the pool, I wanted to start racing again, I wanted to be competitive again and I wanted to go to the Olympics," said Thorpe.
"I still want to do all of those things. I've missed out on what was a huge goal for me to accomplish in this short period of time. But there is still the desire there. I still want to swim."
After taking the next few days off to sit back and watch the selection trials and see some of his friends - Michael Klim among them - hopefully qualify for London, Thorpe will then sit down and discuss with national team head coach Leigh Nugent and, by telephone, his Switzerland-based coach Gennadi Touretski what his next preparation should look like.
Almost certainly it will be targeted on next year's world championships in Barcelona. And assuredly if Thorpe makes it that far and is showing more than just the glimpse of his old form that surfaced during his 200m freestyle heat, he would push on to the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
He even refused to rule out going through to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro when he would be 33. But that's the current age of Geoff Huegill, who is swimming at near the peak of his form and one year younger than Klim, who this morning was one of the 16 swimmers to work their way through to the semi-finals of the 100m freestyle as the 11th fastest qualifier in 49.79sec.
Thorpe, by contrast, lodged the 21st fastest time in the preliminaries, 50.35sec, almost two seconds slower than the pole position clocking posted by the reigning world champion James Magnussen.
It took only one glance at the electronic scoreboard at the end of the race for Thorpe to realise his bid for the London Olympics was over. The 100m freestyle was always going to be his back-up event at best and when he failed to advance past the semi-finals of the 200m freestyle on Friday night, the writing was on the wall.
Thorpe clearly knew his Olympic dream was over, at least for another four years, and poignantly he was reluctant to let it go.
He moved slowly to the side of the pool, so slowly that he still was in the water when the next heat started. Under normal circumstances the officials would not have even started the race under those circumstances but, as when he failed on Friday night, there was a stunned hush around the pool and no-one could bring himself to give the five-times Olympic champion the hurry-up.
Even his fellow competitors sensed they were witnessing a rare sight. Thorpe, not defeated perhaps, but certainly beaten for the moment.
"Thorpie has been someone I've always admired as a swimmer," said Magnussen. "It is upsetting for him and the rest of us do feel his pain. It would have been great to have him there in London. It's disappointing he's not going to be there but all I can do now is focus on my own race."
He has a bit to focus on. Even though he looked magnificent in the pool, riding high on the water, he revealed he was feeling unwell.
"I was pretty surprised by the time (48.26). I switched off with 25m to go. It was a fairly ordinary turn but first swim of the week and good to blow some cobwebs out.
"The taper seems to get me every year and I'm feeling a bit crook again," he said. "I was sort of hoping this morning to just stay nice and light and not to have to push myself so it's hard to say what's realistic. I'd say any improvement on the world championship time (47.49sec) would be a pretty good result for me."
Magnussen refused to concede that his illness, whatever it is, would distract him from his goal of going into the London Olympics as the man to beat.
"I won a world championships having pneumonia so, if anything, it hasn't really worried me too much. If I have to swim with one lung, so be it."