KEY POINTS:
As Ian Thorpe this week announced his retirement from swimming at the age of just 24, the big question was: has the Thorpedo sunk himself?
Australia, after all, is the scourge of the tall poppy, where fallen heroes are ground into the dust of history.
The fame of
swimmers, especially, is transitory. Names that have survived in popular lore tend to be notorious or eccentric, such as teenage recluse Shane Gould or Dawn Fraser, banned from the pool for a decade for out-of-the-water high jinks.
And America provided the example of Mark Spitz, the almost impossibly handsome swimmer who at the 1972 Olympics in Munich won a record seven golds, adding to the two won at the previous Games in Mexico City.
If anyone should have been able to leverage sporting excellence into lasting fame it should have been Spitz. Instead, after successive embarrassing appearances on the biggest television shows of the day, the greatest swimmer of his era sank into obscurity.
Now Thorpe is testing new and dangerous waters.
There is possibly no other modern athlete who has so captured the hearts and imagination of Australians. But this is a land that demands much of its idols, and quickly forgets stars when the glory days have passed. If Thorpe is more show than substance, he will become Australia's Spitz.
But this is his time. Thorpe is riding a huge crest of fame and sympathy that he can surf to a new and prosperous future. Significantly, and unlike most other swimmers, his huge feet have left a global imprint.
And for the moment Thorpe remains Australia's darling: the news of his resignation dominated television and the front pages of newspapers, displacing even the prospect of a chain of nuclear power stations around the continent.
The nation's biggest-selling newspaper, Sydney's Daily Telegraph, ran a special eight-page souvenir edition.
It is not hard to understand the nation's love affair with Thorpe.
By the time he was 15 he was a rising international star. Two years later he was the sensation of the Sydney Olympics.
During his career he won five Olympic golds, three silvers and one bronze - more than any other Australian - 10 Commonwealth golds, 11 world championships, nine Pan-Pacific golds, and 13 world records. Two records, the 200m and 400m freestyle, he still holds.
But Australia also loved Dawn Fraser, the swimming superstar of 40 years ago who won eight Olympic medals - four of them gold - and was the first woman to break the one-minute barrier for the 100m freestyle.
Fraser was a rebel and a larrikin, which should also have endeared her to Australia. But after she was banned from the pool after allegedly climbing a flagpole in the palace of Japanese Emperor Hirohito, and outraging sponsors, Fraser all but vanished until her resurrection as a national icon at the Sydney Olympics.
Shane Gould is another whose ability to turn talent into an adult career fell into a hole of several decades' duration. Gould was a similar sensation, winning three golds, one silver and one bronze at Munich.
She was named the best sportswoman in the world in 1971, and is the only swimmer, ever, to simultaneously hold every world record from 100m to 1500.
At 16 she retired into hippie obscurity and, like, Fraser, did not emerge again until the Sydney Olympics. Significantly, she recognised the strains that were tearing at Thorpe's psyche, and helped him make his decision.
But Thorpe does have happier precedents - fellow Olympic swimmer Kieran Perkins, for example, who has made a successful career outside the pool.
Other athletes have used sports to kick-start futures based on intelligence and other natural talents. Ron Clarke, the Australian distance runner who set 19 world records in the 1960s, made a prosperous business developing health and fitness centres and is now Gold Coast mayor.
New Zealand triple Olympic gold medallist Peter Snell completed a doctorate in exercise physiology and is now a professor in the University of Texas' Department of Internal Medicine and director of its human performance centre.
Thorpe, in contrast, is a high school dropout, albeit dux of his primary school and a high scorer in school certificate by correspondence.
What he does have, in spades, is a national and international profile; the focus and determination of an outstanding athlete; an intelligence and a maturity that has astounded many who have worked with him; and charm, looks and charisma. He is also fortunate to have been an Australian.
While earning only a fraction of the income of athletes in other fields, the pool catapulted a teenage Thorpe into the nation's heart.
The prize money may not be great, but swimming is iconic in Australia: 40 per cent of the nation's Olympic medals have been won in the pool.
The Sydney Olympics and Thorpe's natural charm thrust the teenage swimmer on to the global A-list. He was flown to New York by Georgio Armani for the 25th anniversary of the fashion designer's business, and rubbed shoulders with actors such as Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.
He starred in his own reality television show and is about to host another. Supermodel Elle McPherson paid A$5000 ($5780) for a poster-size picture of him at a charity auction.
Thorpe has designed his own line of pearl jewellery, and another in men's underwear. They sell, big time.
His fame has also been his bane. There is probably no more recognisable face - or body - in Australia, and even in his mid-teens he had to carry a load of pens for autograph hunters. He had to go to court to get a pair of stalkers off his back.
He is intensely personal, with a touch of Greta Garbo: he keeps his personal life private. When asked if he was gay, Thorpe said he was flattered by the question but, no, he was straight, and would never answer the suggestion again. And he is already enormously wealthy, earning at last count almost A$4 million a year.
In this, Thorpe has shown real acumen. He has major sponsors such as watchmaker Omega, adidas, Audi, Qantas, Uncle Tobys, Westpac, Telstra and Channel 7, plus others in Japan.
But he has also made it clear that Thorpe Inc has a much grander, strategic vision well beyond traditional sponsorships. This includes Thorpedo Foods, a joint venture with So Natural Foods, with licensing agreements with Yakult Honsha Co, and a growing portfolio of other interests.
Sports psychologist and academic Deirdre Anderson, who helped Thorpe make his decision, summed it up for the Daily Telegraph: "We are just starting, not finishing. We are just moving into the important part, which is the rest of his life."
