The Summer Olympics: Ian Thorpe

Is Ian Thorpe the most technically proficient swimmer of all time? Probably not. Is he the most physically powerful freestyler there has ever been? No again. Surprisingly, he is unimpressive in the gym and hopeless at ball sports. But at 6 ft. 4 in. and 200 lbs., with natural buoyancy and a basketballer's feet and hands, he can move water like the moon. His cartoon elasticity, combined with the longest stroke in swimming, makes "Thorpedo" everything his nickname suggests: sleek, smooth, strangely beautiful and, to the competition, lethal. "If you were going to do a Frankenstein," says Brian Sutton, coach of nine Australian Olympians, "if you were going to put a swimmer together from scratch, you'd build Ian Thorpe."

He is just 17 years old and has swum the 200 m and 400 m faster than anyone else in history. He fascinates rivals, coaches, sports scientists and fans. In two years, he has become Australia's most admired athlete, ahead of track star Cathy Freeman. While the Aboriginal Freeman is the host nation's only big hope in the main arena, Thorpe spearheads its mightiest swim team in decades. In an island nation, you would expect water sports to be important. They are. Of all the Olympic events, the home fans are savoring a duel in the pool with the Yanks, who don't seem to have an answer for the teenage talisman.

Skillfully managed, gracious and well spoken, Thorpe has been embraced by a public disturbed by the antics of sportsmen such as local tennis brat Lleyton Hewitt. Thorpe's impact on Australian youth has been compared with the Tiger Woods phenomenon in golf. "He's become a similar figure of hope, an ultimate role model," argues 1988 Olympic 200-m champion Duncan Armstrong. Thorpe has been a cover boy on magazines ranging from the frivolous to the prestigious, and many Australians feel they know a lot about him--from his shoe size (17) to his taste in music (grunge) to the girls he gets mushy about (Britney Spears, Aussie pop star Kylie Minogue).

Coaches like Sutton see thousands of hopefuls, and there's always a weakness: aerobic or strength limitations, lack of competitiveness, laziness, fragility. Something. But in Thorpe, Sutton can't find one, and neither can many others. "He marries grace with power," says Armstrong. "He caresses the water, but when it's time to be brutal, he's like a raging bull."

For two years, just for fun, Armstrong has hatched "plan after plan to beat this bloke in my head. And every time I've come up with a theory, someone has gone out and done what I imagined--got on him early, or pounded him in the turns or stuck to him like glue to see if he'd crack." Thorpe has had an answer for every challenge.

It's premature to group Thorpe with superstars like Mark Spitz and Alexander Popov as an all-time great, but if he swims in three Olympics, as he plans to, and dominates as he has in lesser meets since 1998, he will belong in that company. He has already staked a claim: the swimming community thought it had seen a race for the ages when Australian Kieren Perkins recorded 3:43.80 in the 400 m at the 1994 world championships in Rome. The field trailed 10 m behind, an eternity. But Thorpe has since lowered that mark three times, most recently to 3:41.33. By comparison, Klete Keller, America's best 400-m man, and no polliwog, swam 3:47.18 last month--a new U.S. record. He would lose to Thorpe by 11 m.