Hackett's record that suits the times

In Rome overnight, after a week of controversy which saw 43 world records fall (a record in itself), leaving stars of swimming such as Ian Thorpe and Inge De Bruin without a world best time remaining in the book, one record stood tall and unbroken. Grant Hackett’s gold medal winning 14:34:56 over 1500m at the 2001 world championships in Fukuoka, set without the aid of a swimsuit akin to an outboard motor attached to his back, may now last for decades.

The grand finale of any world swimming meet is the lung busting, lactic acid inducing 1500m torture test. Thirty lonely laps, tracing the black line up and back.

Seven others raced in that 2001 final but I bet you, like I, would be guessing in naming more than one of them. Always racing for silver and bronze, the spotlight was solely on Hackett.

Pride and desire prevented him from coasting to the wall and collecting his second world championship gold medal. Instead, Hackett destroyed himself and in turn, Kieren Perkin’s world record, to set a new benchmark a full seven seconds quicker.

Hackett’s former coach, Dennis Cotterill, this week suggested two sets of records should be kept. Those set in the buoyancy assisting suits and those without.

He ‘shuddered to think what Grant could have swum in the new suits,’ and acknowledged the record was a certainty to fall on Sunday night, most likely to his new pupil, Zhang Lin of China, smashing through the sub 14 minute 30 second barrier.

Decked out in a polyurethane suit to be banned from January 1, Hackett’s Beijing nemesis, Tunisia’s Oussama Mellouli, raced fiercely and was deservedly crowned world champion in 14:37:28.

Mellouli, who had mockingly challenged Hackett to come out of retirement for a duel in Rome, was almost four seconds better than his Olympic winning time but still nearly three seconds adrift of Hackett’s record. Zhang Lin couldn’t even break 14:40 in one of world sport’s most arduous individual events.

Records will forever be broken. New superstars emerge, training methods improve, race strategy evolves.

Hackett’s sole remaining world record (his 800m freestyle record was broken early last week by Zhang Lin), will eventually fall.

For now though, that 2001 swim sits as the only non-swimsuit aided world record in existence across all distances, male or female.

Hackett can be well proud his efforts that evening in Japan will long be considered an insurmountable swimming Everest and eight years on, we can all better appreciate just how dominant a force Grant Hackett truly was.