Ian Thorpe: The I Am Me Man

As he looks down at you from his imposing height, dressed casually in navy blue corduroy pants and a body hugger Tee of the same colour, seemingly intent at what you are going to ask him, you realise how different he is from other athletes who often flick aside the veneer around them being mechanised answer-poppers.

  

Ian Thorpe, a master achiever who broke 70s American legend Mark Spitz’s world record of most gold medals ever in the pool, is refreshingly humble, surprisingly candid and shockingly sincere about all that he feels for and talks about. He tells you of his continuous battle with depression as candidly as he calls on fellow athletes to give back to the sport a little bit of the huge territory they have got from it but, with equal enormity, says “it’s ok if you don’t want to.”

Thorpe, now 30, has views on endorsement which are as fierce as his gentleness is in charity work. But beyond his personal thrill that is philanthropy, he is a thinking sporting mind with clear-cut views on career management, Government intervention in sport and the need for athletes to self-manage with adequate psychological training needed to be in the midst of victories and defeat.

Often accused of many things he has declared he has not indulged in, like homosexuality for instance, he tells you how difficult it was for him to deal with the question thrown at him at a tender age of just 15. He is a sportsman who may have been ridiculously singular in his achievement in the pool when he raced, but he just too diverse in tastes that do not often visit sportsmen who are linear in existence. Thorpe loves art, he reads philosophy, he has friends like Heathe Ledger who famously died of an overdose some months after Brokeback Mountain became a hit. Thorpe also has written an engaging biography ‘I am me’ in which he has shown his candid side as never before, declaring his depression to one and all after he kept it a closely guarded secret for more than two decades, getting all bottled up and ready to explode out of life without much help from anyone.

But he has fought it and continues to fit the ailment now that “I have a handle on it and take measures as I see it coming.” Indeed, here’s a sportsman who is much more than just an achiever. He is refined, he is fragile, he is competitive and he is a keen listener. He is a man looking for more trust between the media and the athlete, simply because “if that’s not there, the athlete will always hide everything from you.” He pitches for a less than hysterical response the media generally has to failure and says “there needs to be more balance in the way failures a described.”

On the sidelines of the inaugural edition of the Doha Goals Summit, the Australian legend who is yet again training for the world championships and the 2016 Rio Games as his last shot at reviving the glory of achievement, IAN THORPE spoke to MEENAKSHI RAO to give her a peep into his 50 shades of grey which he said he was now looking at in black and white. Excerpts of the conversation:

Australia had a very average London Olympics, especially in the pool. Do you think there are snags in the swimming programme of the Aussies?

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the swimming programme.  We had an unsuccessful Olympics. We were a little bit unlucky in two events and we wouldn’t be talking about this as extensively in Australia if we had been successful in those two. It would not have been as big a deal as it has become. But I think (laughs), Australia has been far too successful in swimming for a number of years which has led to people making the assumption that we have better programmes and better funding than we actually have and it’s really come down to a group of people in the national team who were very successful at that point of time.

What may be lacking is a level of leadership that does not always come from successful performances, it comes from personalities, doesn’t always have to be most successful who is leader. It should be a group more than all that being on just one person. I am involved in the inquiry into this and what we need do in the future. We had was a very average, wasn’t bad statistically, right on average Olympics. We will be investigating sport and hopefully, a conversation at the Government level will get to what do we want Australian sport to look like in 20 to 30 years’ time.

Do you think the shrinking performances have much to do with the shrinking sporting budget allocations in Australia?

I don’t think it had too much to do with the budget allocations. It would be great to spend a lot more money and not produce results. If we look at the difference between the funding allocations in rowing in Australia and New Zealand, the Kiwis did better with less money than what the Aussies did with more money. So it’s not always funding. Swimming has been the best funded sports in Australia. We may think we need much more considering how many medals we win as compared to other sports. The money is now being distributed around a bit better and the track and field team which is performing more than us is getting some of it.

But what I fell, is more important, and what the Government needs to look at is getting children active in sport is the best way to reducing spiralling healthcare budgets in the future. The Government of Australia need to look at itself as being the biggest sponsor of sport and they should have the same expectation as a sponsor from what they get out of all of the athlete who receive funding, from the bodies that receive funding for their sports.

Who is the greatest of them all? Mark Spitz or Michael Phelps?

Michael… Easy… well not easy, he has won more medals at one Olympics Games and won more medals across a number of all Olympics Games than anyone else in the world. So it’s a simple one. That question was answered kind of after Beijing when Michael was ahead in both after that and now that he has put himself as the greatest Olympics athletes in terms of both performances of all times.

You had tried hard to come back into the competition for the London Olympics but you failed the trials. How did you deal with the disappointment, especially when you are known to be a depression patient?

I was shattered but I kept swimming. I continue to swim. I am still dealing with the disappointment but I am pleased that I tried to come back and how despite announcing my retirement, I waited to fall in love with the pool all over again. In the end, I suppose I had the best seat in the world – actually the second best pool – to be in the hotseat of the BBC show reporting, commenting on the Games.

You have lived your life in the gaze of public eye, adoration and criticism. How have you coped and what’s your teaching to youngsters of today?

I was just 13 years old and back then there were no media managers to teach you how to handle all that intense and hostile press. It can be intimidating to be at the top all the time. But my advice to the young guys of today is experience it as much as you can. I loved the beauty of being in the pool, outside of it there were these issues to pull you down but once in the pool I was the winner no one could beat. I left everything behind me while swimming and that’s the way it should be for everyone.

Can you lead us through the trials and tribulations of your growing up years and how you dealt with depression?

There were multiple difficult moments in my life. The level of constant scrutiny was tough. At 17, I was accused of my head coach of doing drugs. I was battling all that success behind which I hid the depression. Only my doctor knew about it. I was too embarrassed to tell my parents or friends that I was suffering from depression. I kept it bottled all inside me and now I know how wrong I was in doing so. I should have talked to people who cared for me, it would have helped me tackle the situation better. I felt I was not enjoying as much as others were enjoying my efforts. I felt suicidal. People don’t know that side of sports. I felt I had nowhere to go. When you are depressed you become irrational and suicidal thoughts visit you. Even before I became a name, I had symptoms of depression. The worst thing I did was not tell anyone.

So how did you deal with this and what’s your advice to athletes of today?

One should get used to the fact that what goes up must come down too. I was clear on one thing – there was no one better than me in the pool and that conviction gave me strength. My advice? Work on your mental strength as well as you do on your physical strength.

How did you choose your sport?

Actually, I came into it quite by accident. My sister suffered an injury and was told to swim by the doctor as therapy. I had to take her to the community pool at the YMCA swimming camp. As she swam, I hung around. There were all these workshops like jewellery-making but I didn’t want to grow up making jewellery. I was nine years old then and there was a swimming programme my mother asked me to join. Believe it or not, I was allergic to chlorine and would not step into the pool. But then I joined that class and was one of the four to be selected for the next level….

Are you okay with athletes being blown away with all the sponsorships they can get today? Do you think there should be a pick and choose policy an athlete should adopt while deciding which campaign to take and which one to reject?

During my days, a fast food chain had come up with this irresistible offer. I said no, because for me it is unethical to promote unhealthy food chains as a sporting personality. My agent took me out to tell me about the huge money I was saying no to, but I didn’t change my mind. It is very important to add moral ideals to sponsorships.

What do you think as an athlete, as a Government, one needs to give back to society?

I do a lot of work with my charity outside of sport. I work in indigenous health and education in remote communities in Australia. So I can say what role sport can play. It is not the primary focus of my charity but I see how sport can be an incentive in education among children learning values through sports.

During the London Olympics, we are talking of legacy and all that. So I threw a tweet saying that if anyone needs some swimming lessons, I will be at this pool at this time…. and you know what, too many people turned up. But you know this is what you can do as an individual. But what I would like to see is stronger commitment. As athletes, we do feel passionate about what role sport can play and try to see how it can have a greater impact on the world as a whole. We feel great during Olympic Games and how to spread that out, all that positive messaging can be used in a strong way outside of the Olympic Games as well.

Do you think it is imperative for all athletes to give back to society and the game?

I am not saying all athletes have to do it but they should. Charity thrills me, it fills me. During my work I got to know about the extreme poverty that a rich Australia hides in its belly in its remote areas. In a country as wealthy as Australia, one needs to take care of the people who are underprivileged, something that our Government is not doing. I would love to make a difference in the lives of such people and make the necessary pressure group to have the Government act on such issues.

Don’t you think swimming is an elitist sport out of the purview of many third world nations?

Yes the costs in swimming are spiralling It is one of the five most expensive sports in the world and that should change. It needs more intention and administrators need to realise inclusive all sports should be even as swimming is becoming more and more exclusive. Athletes should individually and as a group contribute in bringing about this change.

What difference a forum like Doha Goals summit can make in your honest opinion?

This is an exceptional event and I am here because I sincerely believe we need to sketch a roadmap to implementing sports as a leading vehicle in bringing about positive social change in the world. It is a great mix of opinion brainstorming between all walks of sporting life – be it NGOs, medicine men, anti-dopers, sporting federations, corporates and heads of states, not to mention the great minds of sports from all over the world. We will discuss how sports can be made accessible to all as it is the greatest instrument to bring about peace, harmony and health to the globe.

Source: The Sunday Pioneer, December 16, 2012