Is Ian Thorpe Relevant Today?

Chuck Warner, author and coach, is an old friend. Thoughtful and passionate about the sport, he has studied the details behind what it takes to achieve swimming excellence.

Lessons from Legends

Ian Thorpe released a new book on his life in October. Does anyone care?

In 2012, at 29 years old, Thorpe failed to make the Australian Olympic Team. A thorough biography of his life and career was completed in 2004 by Greg Hunter, so what’s left to learn?

Is the fact that only one-hundredth of a second at the height of the ‘plastic suit era’ all that separates the Thorpedo from retaining the oldest long course world record in the books enticing enough to take another look at him? You might consider that he did lower the world record five times in the 400-meter freestyle (long course) and then years later his 3:40.08 400-meter freestyle from 2002 the second fastest swim of all time.

His new book has not climbed the New York Times Best Seller list, but unless you just won eight gold medals at the Olympics it’s unlikely a swimming book will. Swimming coaches, swimmers and parents often tend to see the latest trend and leap to it, and Ian Thorpe is not a latest trend.

USA Olympic Coach Eddie Reese tells a story about trends when he was growing up swimming on the east coast of Florida. Everyone was hearing about a new way to swim backstroke with a bent arm. A fast local swimmer bent his arm on the recovery, so all over the Daytona Beach area coaches taught their swimmers to bend their arms over their heads on their recovery, hoping to gain the advantage of this new, allegedly improved style. Then, they learned the bent arm was really effective when it was underwater not on the recovery. Whoops!

History─even recent history─gives us lessons to learn from so we can make better choices today. Parents, coaches and swimmers all have much to learn from history and most certainly from the career of Ian Thorpe, although possibly not over 300 pages.

Like Michael Phelps, Ian had an older sister that was a great swimmer. Christina Thorpe was a world class distance swimmer, a great training partner for Ian growing up and helped mold the family life around being consistent attending practice and concentrating on swimming.

Parents might want to know that Ian had terrific parents and why. He inherited great genes, including the fact that his father was a super-star cricket player and both parents had huge feet. The first -factor suggests that Ian was, and is, a gifted natural athlete and the second helped him become one of the great kickers in the world.

Ian’s parents didn’t push his kids to swim. But his father adopted a policy that if the Thorpe kids were going to be on the swim team, they would complete that year with good sportsmanship and regular practice attendance. At the conclusion of each year there was a break when each child could decide for themselves if they did or didn’t want to continue to swim for the next year.

Coaches can gain knowledge from Ian’s career in several unique areas. One is that when Ian began to enter into ‘senior training’ at age 12, his coach saw the value of his kick and adjusted the timing of the arms to add more of a catch-up of one arm to the next to it to take advantage of his legs.  With one arm always out front, it lengthened his 6’5” vessel and gave him constant forward momentum from his magnificent kick. A second is that he worked very hard on kicking and helped the world renew it’s respect for the effect of being a good kicker.

A third area in his development was the word-pictures his age-group coaches used to teach freestyle. He was instructed to lift his elbow on it’s recovery like a crane was lifting it. His hand should hang underneath the elbow with the crane carrying it forward of his head. At that point he was taught to extend out front and slide into the water to a long extension and catch.

A swimmer today might note that Ian raced without a specific plan except to completely exhaust himself at the finish. He applied his effort with a great deal of intuition. Even though he became the youngest male world champion in history at just 15-years old, he had many great races in and out of Australia with the likes of Grant Hackett. He won the vast majority of big ones with his intuitive application of effort serving him very, very well.

Ian Thorpe became a multi-millionaire through swimming but perhaps what he can teach us best is how we can care for our community. He has said, “Sometimes we question things that we have done in our lives but how many times do we question what we haven’t done in someone else’s.”

About ten years ago, he founded the “Fountain For Youth” in his homeland.  The foundation targets education, health and cultural development programs for native Australian children that live in remote aboriginal communities. Ian has used his fame to help boost awareness for the needs of these children and create partnerships in Australia to produce positive and sometimes dramatic changes. Fountain For Youth now works in 20 remote indigenous communities.

Oh yes, Ian Thorpe is still relevant today. In the long run he may be remembered for what he’s done for others, more than for himself, or as a great swimmer.

Chuck Warner has been a swimming coach for more than forty years. His teams have won seven national Y team championships, been runners-up for the NCAA Division II championship three times, been a USA National Team swim coach three times and Big East Conference coach of the year four times. Chuck has authored two books: “Four Champions, One Gold Medal” about the training and race for the 1500 meter gold medal in the 1976 Olympics. “…And Then They Won Gold: Stepping Stones To Swimming Excellence – Volume I” is out now. It is eight short stories of some of the greatest male swimmers in history. The second volume devoted to women’s swimmers is due out next year. He is the founder, President and CEO of Arete Aquatic Services and owner of the ARETE Swim Camp.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ORDERING“…And Then They Won Gold” go towww.areteswim.com and access “Books/Media.”