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Thorpe Is Happy To Sink Regret

Jul 13, 2012  - Craig Lord

Ian Thorpe appears on Aussie TV this evening in a documentary about his failed attempt to make the London 2012 Games.

"I was in such a haze not realising what had just happened in missing out on the Olympics," Thorpe told ABC. "I was asked the question: 'How does it feel that you are not going to the Olympics?' The reaction was: 'Thanks, I hadn't thought about it'."

Thorpe was way out of contention at Australian trials back in March, missing the cut for domestic freestyle finals, let along the team cut. Even relay reserve places were beyond him.

"You see it hit me, that it's like I didn't plan for this," he tells the network. That said, some things did go to plan: he wanted to ensure that he did not drag regret through the rest of his life over his decision to retire in 2006. 

Thorpe is still training in Switzerland and hopes to get to the world championships in Barcelona next year, 10 years after he was one of the stars of the 2003 global long-course party in the same city just as a fish on his way to becoming even bigger, Michael Phelps, had started to make the headlines.

On his decision to retire back in 2006, Thorpe says: "When I stopped swimming I felt like I hated my sport at the time. I wasn't handling everything that came along with swimming and what it had become in my life. The biggest gift that has come out of this [comeback] is that I've returned to my sport and I love it."

He said something similar of his work with Milt Nelms at the time he retired in 2006. Given his recent form, some time back in the ocean off the Aussie coast learning about the way water works might do Thorpey a power of good.

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