Nick Bendel
What script has been written for our four star swimmers?
February 21st 2011 10:01
Ian Thorpe, Michael Klim, Libby Trickett and Geoff Huegill will soon find out.
All four have returned to competitive swimming after extended periods out of the water. All four are chasing medals at the London Olympics, 17 months from now.
Thorpe, 28, retired in 2006 and officially returned earlier this month.
He was immediately followed back into the pool by Klim, 33, who retired in 2007.
Trickett, 26, retired in December 2009 and returned in September 2010.
Huegill, 31, retired in 2006 and returned in 2008.
All four have already won Olympic medals – silver for Huegill and gold for the others.
This is the standard by which their comebacks will be judged.
That, at least, will be the attitude of many in the media and public. In the first phase of their careers, the swimmers set benchmarks against which their comebacks can easily be compared. If they fail to hit these targets in London, many will deem them to have failed.
But the swimmers may not be thinking so dispassionately.
There seems to be something pure about their second comings. All four have an intimate understanding of the realities of modern sport. Sport was once about athletes competing on a level playing field and striving to be the best they could be. Modern sport is still about excellence and self-improvement – but it is also about sports science and drugs and endorsements and tabloid media coverage.
In such an environment, it is easy for athletes to lose their innocence. They can take drugs to find an easier path to the top. They can become morally corrupted by fame and fortune. They can prolong their careers when their hearts are no longer in it for the sake of one last big paycheque.
However, the cases of Thorpe, Klim, Trickett and Huegill seem to be different.
Unless they’re superb actors, we can say they have un-retired for the purest of reasons – they love swimming and want to challenge themselves. They want to compete for the same reason children compete – because they find it fun. In embracing their inner child, they have embraced purity itself.
That doesn’t mean they won’t be taking it ultra-seriously. It is impossible to reach the level they reached without having a fierce will to win. Elite swimmers don’t have a life, as the four know all too well. They would not have agreed to a daily grind of waking up at an ungodly hour, pushing their body to the limit at training, watching everything they eat and then going to bed at the same time as toddlers if they weren’t determined to again reach the top.
Winning another Olympic medal, though, will be extraordinarily difficult.
Athletes coming out of retirement find they make great strides initially, but as the law of diminishing returns set in, their progress slows and slows and slows, until it seems no more than a crawl.
For athletes of the calibre of Thorpe, Klim, Trickett and Huegill, it is relatively easy to lose enough flab, build enough endurance and sufficiently refine their techniques to qualify for major events.
But then the law of diminishing returns sets in.
Qualifying for the event is the easy part. Making it from the heat to the semi-final is an even bigger leap. Making it from the semi-final to the final is a bigger leap still. But to then push on from being an also-ran to an Olympic medallist – to being one of the three best swimmers in a world of almost seven billion people – requires the biggest leap of all.
Olympic medallists are not just very fit or even remarkably fit – they are supremely fit. Olympic medallists don’t just have a very good technique or even a remarkable technique – they have a supreme technique.
Reaching such heights requires great talent and even more work. The fitness of an Olympic medallist takes years to build – and a lot less time to destroy. Extended periods removed from elite training can only have a serious effect.
There are also serious consequences for an athlete’s technique. Sports are constantly evolving, which is why athletes are always swimming quicker, leaping higher and throwing further.
A swim is composed of numerous technical components. Swimming would have evolved while the four were in retirement. Some of those components would have been refined; others would have been thrown out and replaced. Mastering each of these complicated components would require many months, if not years.
Of the four, Trickett is the best placed. She is the youngest of the group and had the shortest retirement. However, even her nine months out of the water have put her at a competitive disadvantage.
So for all their talent and experience and hunger, the odds are against Thorpe, Klim, Trickett and Huegill winning medals in London.
If that happens, the members of the media and public who deem medals to be the currency of success will adjudge them failures.
On the other hand, those who hold a more romantic view of sport will probably regard mere qualification for the Olympics as a triumph.
Where the four swimmers sit on this scale is impossible to know.
All one can say is that when it comes to sequels, the most banal logic applies: if you think it’s better than the original, it is.
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