Still Cool

He says all the right things the right way. You are thinking Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky or Alex Rodriguez, those vintage models of the superstar athlete in the clothes of a cool corporate pitchman.

Swim star Ian Thorpe, winner of three gold medals and two silver at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, seems to slot neatly into that role, delivering sound bites almost on cue. The ability has been fine-tuned through years of interviews, the knowledge that his quotes will be parsed, weighed and all but played backward in swimming-crazed Australia.

There is more under the surface, though.

“It’s like an artist doing a canvas,” said his coach, Tracey Menzies. “There’s many layers that go into a canvas, but when you put up the exhibition being viewed, all you see is up on the walls. When he races, all you’re seeing is the finished product.”

Thorpe has smoothly navigated several potentially difficult issues -- most prominently, his controversial disqualification in the 400-meter freestyle at the Australian national trials and the decision of colleague Craig Stevens to give up the spot for him in Athens at the Olympics. He and Stevens and some of their national teammates will be swimming in Long Beach at the Janet Evans Invitational, which starts Thursday.

A layer is peeled back when the topic of his female coach comes up. Menzies, 31, took over from Thorpe’s longtime mentor, Doug Frost, in the fall of 2002. For Thorpe, the bar is set so high that non-world-record performances, let alone non-gold-medal swims are viewed as disappointments.

The scrutiny is equal opportunity, and Menzies has caught some heat, which started with questions about her qualifications to guide the career of a 21-year-old legend, in his prime. Thorpe is asked how much of this flak is because Menzies is a woman.

“Yeah, a lot,” Thorpe said. “This is very much like a men’s club, basically. Especially in Australia. That’s the way it always has been and a lot of people would like to keep it that way.”

Forget the Jordan comparison.

“He’s a very brave warrior,” Menzies said. “When he goes out, he defends himself very, very well.”

Yeah, on land as well as in the water.

“Ian was developing from a boy to a man too,” she said. “He needed new challengers, new aspects in his life.

“In the last two years, he’s developed a lot as a person as well as a swimmer. He wanted to take more control of his life.”

This included making the coaching change, a move he thought necessary to stay in the sport.

“I think I was a little bit lost there for a while,” Thorpe said. “I wasn’t enjoying myself as much as I had in the past. I was still enjoying it but not to the extent I had while I was growing up. I had to find that, otherwise I wasn’t going to do this any longer. I would have been prepared to walk away from the sport if I didn’t get that satisfaction in my training, and actual enjoyment.”

And now?

“I’m happy. I’m enjoying myself again,” Thorpe said.

There were always hints of steel behind the smile, even before Thorpe made his Olympic debut at Sydney in 2000, in the midst of countrywide pressure. He and his handlers successfully argued that his then-Adidas Equipment Bodysuit be classified as “technical equipment,” which allowed him to wear the full bodysuit instead of the one made by rival manufacturer Speedo, which was sponsoring the Australian swim team.

Thorpe was talking with three reporters, two of them European, late last month when he was training with several members of the Australian national team at the Northern Arizona University High-Altitude Training Center. Behind him were promotions of his new Jetconcept bodysuit. The suit was brought out, and Thorpe said putting it on took him about 20 minutes.

Flagstaff, though, was far removed from the Stevens development. The episode started when Thorpe inexplicably tumbled off the blocks at the Australian Olympic trials in March in the 400, something that doesn’t happen to age-group swimmers, much less the defending Olympic champion.

The false start disqualified him from the preliminaries and his subsequent appeal was denied. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, from national political leaders to his teammates to famous former Olympians to stunned U.S. competitors, who were shocked to see the sequence of photos of the splash and crash on the Internet.

Thorpe handled the matter in a classy fashion, becoming one of the few to emerge with an enhanced reputation. Stevens, who later stepped aside in favor of Thorpe, endured sleepless nights and was criticized in some quarters for accepting money from the Seven Network to make the announcement on national television in Australia.

In Flagstaff, Thorpe said, “I don’t think the rule should be changed. I think the understanding, being able to listen to an athlete, should be considered a little more closely than it actually was at that decision. It was grueling, and it was tough.

“Usually after an Olympic trials, you’re quite excited about the next preparation and looking at what you’re going to do. In this situation, I had this uncertainty of what was going to happen. I just dismissed that I wasn’t going to swim the event, and I was going to prepare for the 100 and 200 freestyle, that was how I looked at it. That was the only way to look at it. If I was going to be able to give myself the best opportunity to prepare for those events.”

Said Menzies: “It was like a fork in the road. He could either decide, ‘Why me? Poor me’ or look and learn from this and become a better person. I said, ‘I’m not going to let you take the poor-me [approach]. You’re going to become a better person because of this.’ I think it’s really made him appreciate how much he really wants the 400 and how much he enjoys that event.”

He wouldn’t be human, though, if the false start didn’t play on his mind.

“What I’m doing on the block is playing with perfection and with that comes a risk,” Thorpe said. “It’s a risk you have to be prepared to take. I don’t think there’s any fault in my start, none whatsoever. I’ve worked too hard for there to be any faults.

“I won’t change anything. Now the only thing I have to get out of my mind is the hesitation I have on the blocks. It sticks in your mind. Hopefully, by the Olympics that will be gone.”

In Long Beach, Thorpe is planning on swimming the 400, along with the 100 and 200 freestyles. At the World Championships last summer in Barcelona, he won three gold medals -- in the 200, 400 and the 800 freestyle relay -- a silver in the 200 individual medley and the bronze in the 100, finishing behind Alexander Popov of Russia and Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands.

The 200 medley was his only individual matchup with American teenage star Michael Phelps in Barcelona. Phelps won the race decisively; Thorpe finished second. There won’t be another meeting in that race in Athens. Thorpe said the timing of the 200 IM would affect his 100 freestyle at the Olympics and that he was focusing more on the shorter distances.

“I was relatively pleased with how I swam in Barcelona, a little bit disappointed in some ways with some of my events because I think I trained too hard and too well to swim the times I actually did,” Thorpe said.

Phelps, who set five world records in Barcelona, has become what Thorpe was in 2000, one of the most high-profile faces of the Olympics, heading into the Games. There were Phelps’ five world records in Barcelona, including two in one day, his public pursuit of Mark Spitz’s record seven Olympic gold medals and the $1-million bonus dangled by Speedo.

“I think everyone has a legitimate shot, but I don’t think anyone will ever achieve that ever again,” Thorpe said.

He shared the dais with Phelps in the news conference in Barcelona after the 200 IM. They sat next to one another and during the long translations of English into Spanish and Spanish back into English, they scribbled and passed notes to one another, like two schoolchildren at a boring assembly session.

Rivalry?

“Not between Michael and I,” Thorpe said. “Everyone likes to think there is. But there’s none.”

Only with himself and his past achievements. That’s more than enough.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Aussie Hero

Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe lists U.S. Olympic legends Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis and Michael Jordan as his heroes:

Born: Oct. 13, 1982 (age 21).

Hometown: Sydney, Australia.

2000 Olympics: first, 400-meter freestyle (3:40.59, world record); second, 200 freestyle (1:45.83); first, 400 freestyle relay, (3:13.67, WR), first, 800 freestyle relay (7:07.05, world record); second, 400 medley relay (3:35.27). Note: Thorpe swam preliminary leg of medley relay.

Thorpe’s personal bests:

*--* 2002 NSW STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS

*--*

Event: 50-meter freestyle.

Time: 0:24.15.

Date: Jan. 12-19.

*--* 2002 COMMONWEALTH GAMES

*--*

Event: 100-meter freestyle.

Time: 0:48.73.

Date: Aug. 2.

*--* 2001 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

*--*

Event: 200-meter freestyle.

Time: 1:44.06 (WR).

Date: July 25.

*--* 2002 COMMONWEALTH GAMES

*--*

Event: 400-meter freestyle.

Time: 3:40.08 (WR).

Date: July 30.

*--* 2002 COMMONWEALTH GAMES

*--*

Event: 100-meter backstroke.

Time: 0:55.38.

Date: Aug. 3.

*--* 2000 SYDNEY OLYMPIC GAMES

*--*

Event: 400-meter freestyle relay.

Time: 3:13.67.

Date: Sept. 16.

*--* 2001 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

*--*

Event: 800-meter freestyle relay.

Time: 7:04.66.

Date: July 26.

*--* 2002 PAN PACIFIC CHAMPIONSHIPS

*--*

Event: 400-meter medley relay.

Time: 3:34.84.

Date: Aug. 29.

*--* 2003 FINA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

*--*

Event: 200-meter individual medley.

Time: 1:59.66.

Date: July 25.