Swimming’s dormant rivalry
No big splash


INDIVIDUAL sports thrive on great rivalries. Think of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe in tennis, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett in athletics or Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in boxing. Having never gripped the public imagination like those other sports, swimming has not been helped by its lack of similar match-ups. So when news broke in February that Australia’s Ian Thorpe (pictured, left) was planning a comeback at London 2012, where he might compete against Michael Phelps (right) of the United States, it seemed to promise a contest between two titans of the pool. Sadly, it is starting to look as if the Phelps-Thorpe rivalry will make little splash at next year’s Olympics.
This is not to diminish the sportsmen themselves, both of whom rank among swimming’s all-time greats. Mr. Thorpe is Australia’s top swimmer, having won five Olympic gold medals (three in 2000 and two four years later). Michael Phelps is one of the most successful Olympians ever, collecting a record eight gold medals in Beijing three years ago to add to the six he won in 2004. When the two swam against each other in the 200m (656 feet) freestyle at Athens 2004, the media billed the event as “the race of the century”. Mr. Thorpe won, while Mr. Phelps could only manage bronze on that occasion. But a great rivalry seemed to be in the making.
Unfortunately, Mr. Thorpe retired in 2006, at the age of just 24, before that rivalry had any chance to develop. Whether illness, mental burnout or something else was to blame for this decision, he has now spent so many years out of the pool that he will struggle to make the grade for the 2012 London Olympics. It is not just the duration of his absence that counts against him, as he will be nearly 30 next summer. While that is only two or three years older than some of his closest competitors, it is a relatively advanced age for a comeback, especially as Mr. Thorpe started so young (he was first selected for Australia’s national team when he was 14). Moreover, since swimming is a straight race lacking the strategic and tactical elements of other sports, older swimmers cannot easily make up in experience for what they have lost in fitness.
The Australian’s recent results are not encouraging. Earlier this month at the Tokyo World Cup, he failed to make the final of the 100m freestyle and came 26th in the heats of the 100m butterfly. On a more positive note, he swam much faster than in Beijing only a few days earlier. But he is still well off the pace set by race leaders, with just four months to go before he must attempt to qualify for London.
In the meantime, Mr. Phelps’s achievements must look daunting. In the 200m freestyle, the event both swimmers are most likely to contest, Mr. Phelps set a new world record of one minute, 43.86 seconds in 2007, beating Mr. Thorpe’s previous record of one minute, 44.06 seconds set in 2001. Indeed, despite collecting gold medals in this event at all the major competitions between 2001 and 2004, Mr. Thorpe has never swum faster than in 2001. In 2008, Mr. Phelps went even better, setting a world record of one minute, 42.96 seconds, although he did so wearing a performance-enhancing polyurethane suit that was subsequently banned (but only after Germany’s Paul Biedermann had broken this record in 2009 with a time of one minute, 42.00 seconds, using an even more advanced bodysuit).
Mr. Phelps’s own preparations for London now seem to be going well, following a sequence of losses after Beijing, while the controversy over swimsuits was raging. But his best results are coming in butterfly, while Mr. Thorpe’s favorite event is freestyle. Although both men could enter the water at the same time for the 200m freestyle, that race is currently being dominated by Ryan Lochte, a virtual understudy to Mr. Phelps in Beijing who beat the Olympic winner in this year’s World Aquatics Championships, taking gold with a time of one minute, 44.44 seconds.
Mr. Thorpe cannot be written off entirely. Even with an advanced polyurethane suit, Mr. Biedermann could shave only a hundredth of a second off Mr. Thorpe’s fastest time for the 400m freestyle of three minutes, 40.08 seconds, recorded six years before polyurethane suits first appeared. With all swimmers garbed in ordinary textiles for London, Mr. Thorpe could enjoy success if he can hit the levels he reached a decade earlier. But he has ruled himself out of the 400m event, which was previously his best, saying he does not have enough time to prepare for the longer distance. As he focuses on qualifying for the shorter races, the clock is ticking.

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