Heroes of swimming: Ian Thorpe

Who ever heard of a swimming champion who's allergic to chlorine?

Despite being the son of a talented Australian cricketer, as a boy Ian Thorpe was useless at ball sports (an affliction with which Heroes of Swimming sympathises; in fact, we wonder if Ian is also a rubbish dancer). Thorpe's older sister told him to come swimming with her instead, but he was allergic to chlorine and had to swim with his head out of the water. It didn't stop him winning his first race.

By the time he was 13, Thorpe was already more than six feet tall. He was also now putting his face in the water, and going extremely quickly: at 14, he ducked under the four-minute barrier for 400m freestyle, and a few months later he shaved that time down to 3:53.44 at the Australian Swimming Championships. It got him into the team for the Pan Pacific Championships as the youngest Australian swimmer ever to represent his country.

It seemed like every time Thorpe swam, he swam faster. He was also still growing, which must have been worrying for the fully grown swimmers he was already beating. He came home from the 1997 Pan Pacifics with silver medals from the 4x200m relay and the individual 400m freestyle. He looked nailed on – and was duly selected – for the 1998 World Championships in Perth. There, his big rival was fellow Aussie Grant Hackett. A couple of years older, Hackett had been dishing it out to Thorpe for a while, and must have had every expectation of doing it again. Thorpe, though, had other ideas.

With 100m left to swim in the final of the 400m freestyle, Hackett was an extremely comfortable 2.29 seconds ahead. In swimming terms, a 2.29 gap over 100m is a lifetime: Heroes of Swimming's mum could hold a gap like that. At the 50-to-go turn, Thorpe had pulled it back to 1.53, and an honourable silver medal beckoned – but then he turned on the afterburners.

Thorpe's finishing burst, with a kick that looked like someone had attached an outboard motor to his feet, would soon be famous, but this was the first time it had been unleashed on the world stage. Thorpe came down that last length like a train, and Hackett had no answer. He was ahead all the way until the very last stroke of the race – at which point Thorpe touched the wall first. At 15 years and three months old, he was the youngest-ever male world champion.

That 1998 gold was the start of an amazing run of global titles and world records at the Commonwealth Games, World Championships and the Pan Pacific Championships. His victory over 400m at the Pan Pacifics in 1999 – where he smashed Hackett and the great South African Ryk Neethling, and bettered the world record by two seconds – stunned the swimming community. It was memorably described by the peerless Rowdy Gaines, himself a four-time Olympic gold medallist: "[Thorpe] went into a balls-out sprint at 250m, and I have never seen anything like that. I've been around swimming a long time, and it's the most amazing swim I've ever seen, hands down."...