The Serve

Please Ian don’t be guilty

The thing about Ian Thorpe is that he has always been different. No regular athlete. No regular man.

When he burst on the scene, he was 14, yet articulate. Different. He talked openly about spending his new found wealth on buying a cappuccino machine. Quaint. Different. He wouldn’t go to Kings Cross and get hammered, preferring fashion shows. Okay, pictures of him wearing that feminine coat in front of the Eiffel Tower raised eyebrows, but it was Thorpie. He’d happily turn up at those fashion shows without the trophy model holding his hand. Sure, that drew some questions, but he didn’t care. Different was part of the Thorpe trademark, part of the mystique. When it came to endorsements, he didn’t just put his name to a product and collect cheques, he bought the damn company.

His retirement echoed his career. He told parents what to tell their kids, he plucked out 2:53 on a Sunday afternoon as his moment of clarity. Who is this? Not a typical Australian athlete, that’s for certain. Not a regular athlete, full stop.

There are lots of question marks about these supposed tests, but if they prove that Thorpe used performance enhancing drugs, then he is no longer different. He becomes just another athlete who put himself above the game. One of thousands. He would sit at the same table as Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson and Floyd Landis. It’s an ugly table which seems to have an endless supply of seats.

This is on its own level. There are very few athletes that could make one question their beliefs in sport. Thorpe is one of them. Imagine how we would have felt if Cathy Freeman delivered a positive test after her win in Sydney? If Thorpe has done this, how could we ever be convinced again about any athlete? The big feet, the enormous frame, the pure stroke. A freakish specimen. Thorpe was the one guy who didn’t need assistance. If he had to juice up, then everyone is a suspect.

We only have a suspected abnormality in a test, which Thorpe has yet to defend, but already the reputation is being stripped away. We’re now asking why he stopped so suddenly, when it appeared he had finally rediscovered his mojo. If this happened in 2006, when his career was in the toilet, what must he have been doing in his prime? Perhaps unfair questions, but they are the questions we’re asking in this time of disorder.

Think of the ramifications. If he is guilty, can swimming ever be the same? For a decade, this niche sport has occupied a week of prime time television at least once each year. Remarkable popularity. The success often attributed to our fresh faced, hard working, clean living kids taking on the world. There is such an innocence to it, such a counter-culture to other sports.

One positive test could destroy it.

No one apparently lived a cleaner life than Thorpe. He was so chaste he was one step short of using Hulk Hogan’s ‘train, say your prayers and take your vitamins’ line.

Oh yeah, Hogan is another sitting at the table.

Come to think of it, that Hogan line is actually quite apt.

I know I’ll be saying my prayers.