Hot on the heels of last week’s news Ian Thorpe’s comeback isn’t dead – merely preening itself – the former swim wonderkid now says that an unspecified shoulder injury has at last killed it off. Finito! Kaput!
The champion’s recent comeback prognostications have had more qualifications than a Harley Street specialist. But this time there is a growing sense he really, really, really has booked a bed in the nursing home for recidivist sporting careers.
Stay tuned for reports of alternating near-death panic flashes and fun-embracing epiphanies as he publicly grapples with the seven stages of sporting ego-death.
Such crises of course will be channeled through the usual media, Women’s Day et al, whose readers gladly pay for that kind of proxy gestalt and/or retain a soft spot for someone they still see as the suave, anti-jock dilettante their Steiner School aspiring toddlers will morph into.
In the meantime, Thorpe has assured fans that he isn’t going out completely cold turkey. It’ll be a kind of slow yin-yang extended detox from the addictive chloramines and dopamines of the daily pool beat.
His recent mentor, Gennadi Touretsky, has volunteered to continue flogging the living daylights out of Thorpe morning and night, back and forth, apparently for no other reason than old times’ sake. And somewhere below them in the foothills of the Swiss Alps the Higgs Boson particle whizzes around its own laps of the Hadron particle accelerator. The synchronicity must be awe inspiring.
Not that Touretsky is one to wax lyrical about such symbolism. His style has always been more to the point. Like serial episodes of international air rage when cabin staff weren’t as subservient as his swimmers. Or leaving Australia after ACT police found his private safe on the shores of Lake Burleigh Griffin, the door jemmied open with vials of steroids intact.
So you can see charming ol’ Gennadi waiting hand and foot on Thorpie forever and a day just to savor watching him glide through a psychic worm-hole to retirement’s elysian pastures.
More than likely it is expected that Gennadi will wait until just beyond his last doubt that he will ever ride a Thorpie comeback into the history books before caustically directing him toward the lifestyle lanes with a click of his fingers.
Yet it’s not as if the champion has illusions about his flawed svengali either. “He’s got a wild reputation”, Thorpe told a charity luncheon last week. “I guess that says something about me too” he cheekily soliloquised.
The plain truth is that both men are at a watershed of sorts. Thorpe is basically unqualified at much except being himself, as one of only four Australians to have won three individual Olympic gold medals – his equals being the late Murray Rose, the early Shane Gould and the omnipresent Dawn Fraser.
If it’s any consolation, none of those legends seemed to have a regular shingle to hang on their door either – apart from a long string of PR type gigs – yet they are still unequivocally revered for their feats in the pool.
The difference with Thorpe is that he collected an additional two gold medals by virtue of government sponsored team mates who could cobble together a world class relay. Gould, Rose and Fraser had no such gigs to elevate them to that level. Oh, and Thorpe has money, which is another fabulous stroke of timing and providence they others lacked, being born way back when.
So cheer up, man. Comeback or no comeback, things could have turned out worse. Australians still think you’re pretty cool, though they care more for your welfare than your future. As for Touretsky, good luck to him, but we don’t go for him too much over here.
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