Ian Thorpe

As expected, Thorpe missed selection; he finished 23rd in the 400 m freestyle and 36th in the 200 m backstroke.

At the end of the year, Thorpe qualified for the Australian Short Course Championships.

Ian James Thorpe (born 13 October 1982) is an Australian retired swimmer who specialised in freestyle, but also competed in backstroke and the individual medley.

He has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian along with fellow swimmer Emma McKeon.

Thorpe gradually overcame the ailment and progressed to the captaincy of New South Wales for the Australian Primary Schools Championships in 1994.

He subsequently won nine individual gold medals at the New South Wales Short Course Age Championships in September of the same year.

In 1995, Thorpe started his secondary education at East Hills Boys Technology High School and switched coaches to swim alongside his sister under the tutelage of Doug Frost.

It was a busy year for the family; Christina was selected for the Australian team to compete at the 1995 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Atlanta.

Now six feet tall, Ian competed at his first Australian Age Championships, winning bronze medals in the 200 m and 400 m freestyle.

He won all ten events at the New South Wales Age Championships.

Thorpe competed at the 1996 Australian Age Championships in Brisbane, winning five gold, two silver and two bronze medals.

His times in the 400 m freestyle and 200 m backstroke qualified him for the Australian Championships, which doubled as selection trials for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Frost knew that Thorpe had no realistic chance of making the top two in any event, which would have meant Olympic selection at only 13 years and six months.

He sent Thorpe to Sydney merely to gain competition experience at senior national level.

It was another chance to gain national selection, as the event served as the selection trials for the 1997 FINA World Swimming Championships.

Thorpe qualified in second place in the heats of the 400 m individual medley and reached his first national final.

However, he swam more slowly in the final and missed selection.

At the New South Wales Championships in January 1997, Thorpe's time of 3 min 59.43 s in the 400 m was eight seconds faster than his previous personal best; it made him the first 14-year-old to cover the distance in less than four minutes on Australian soil.

At the age of 14, Thorpe became the youngest male ever to represent Australia, and his victory in the 400 metre freestyle at the 1998 Perth World Championships made him the youngest-ever individual male World Champion.

Thorpe was the first person to have been named Swimming World Swimmer of the Year four times, and was the Australian Swimmer of the Year from 1999 to 2003.

With three gold and two silver medals, Thorpe was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Summer Olympics, held in his hometown of Sydney.

His athletic achievements made him one of Australia's most popular athletes, and he was recognised as the Young Australian of the Year in 2000.

Born in Sydney, Thorpe grew up in the suburb of Milperra and hailed from a sporting family.

His father Ken was a promising cricketer at junior level, representing Bankstown District Cricket Club in Sydney's district competition.

A talented batsman, he once topped the season's batting averages ahead of former Australian Captain Bob Simpson.

However, paternal pressure detracted from Ken's enjoyment of cricket, and he retired at the age of 26.

Thorpe's mother Margaret played A-grade netball, but he did not inherit his parents' ball skills.

His elder sister Christina was advised to take up swimming to strengthen a broken wrist, so by chance, the five-year-old Thorpe followed her into the pool.

Due to his unhappy experiences, Ken Thorpe regarded enjoyment as the most critical aspect of his children's participation in sport.

A large baby, Thorpe weighed 4.1 kg and measured 59 cm in length at birth.

As a young child, Thorpe was sidelined by an allergy to chlorine.

As a result, he did not swim in his first race until a school carnival at the age of seven.

The allergy forced Thorpe to swim with his head out of the water; despite this ungainly technique, he won the race, primarily because of his significant size advantage.

At the 2001 World Aquatics Championships, he became the first person to win six gold medals in one World Championship.

Aside from 13 individual long-course world records, Thorpe anchored the Australian relay teams, numbering the victories in the 4 × 100 m and the 4 × 200 m freestyle relays in Sydney among his five relay world records.

After that victory, Thorpe dominated the 400 m freestyle, winning the event at every Olympic, World, Commonwealth and Pan Pacific Swimming Championships until his break after the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

His wins in the 200 m and 400 m and his bronze in the 100 m freestyle at the 2004 Summer Olympics made him the only male to have won medals in the 100–200–400 combination.

He acquired the nickname "Thorpedo" because of his speed in swimming.

Thorpe announced his retirement from competitive swimming in November 2006, citing waning motivation; he made a brief comeback in 2011 and 2012.

In total, Thorpe has won eleven World Championship gold medals; this is the fifth-highest number of gold medals won by any male swimmer.