Ian Thorpe: The Life Story Behind Australia's Thorpedo
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Some swimmers win races. Ian Thorpe changed the way a whole country felt about swimming. In the summer of 2000, when the Olympic Games came to his home city of Sydney, he was still a teenager, and the noise that greeted him each time he walked out to the pool was unlike anything Australian sport had heard before. People called him the Thorpedo, a nickname built from his surname and the word torpedo, and it fitted him. He moved through the water with a long, smooth stroke that looked easy, and yet the clock kept saying that no one in the world could match him.
Thorpe was born in Sydney on 13 October 1982, and he grew up in a sporting family in the suburb of Milperra. His father played cricket, his mother played netball, and his older sister Christina was a swimmer too. Ian followed her into the pool when he was five years old, even though he was allergic to chlorine and the water made him ill. That detail matters, because it tells you something about the boy. He did not take the easy road into the sport. He started out with a body that fought against the water, and he learned to live with that discomfort until the water became his home.
What made Thorpe different was not only his speed. It was his size and the way he used it. He was tall, with very large hands and feet, and his feet were often described as size seventeen. In the water, those feet worked like flippers, and his long arms pulled him forward in a way that looked effortless. Coaches who watched him as a boy said his stroke was smooth in a way that could not be taught. He did not splash and fight the water. He glided through it, and the glide was what made him fast.
This is the story of a swimmer who won five Olympic gold medals, broke world records again and again, retired while he was still young, tried to come back, and then built a second life outside the pool. It is also the story of a shy teenager who became the most famous face of an Olympic Games, and who later spoke honestly about how hard that fame had been to carry.
A Sydney Boy Who Was Allergic to the Pool
Ian James Thorpe was born in Sydney on 13 October 1982, and his childhood was an ordinary Australian one in many ways. He lived with his parents and his sister Christina in Milperra, a suburb in the south-west of the city, and sport was part of everyday life in the house. His father, Ken, had played cricket at a good level, and his mother, Margaret, had played netball. The family understood training, practice, and competition, and they did not treat sport as a strange thing. It was simply what you did after school.
Christina was the swimmer in the family first, and Ian went along to the pool because she was there. He was five years old when he started swimming lessons, and the early days were not easy. He was allergic to chlorine, the chemical used to keep pool water clean, and it left him with a blocked nose and sore eyes. Many children would have stopped. Thorpe did not. He kept going back, and as he grew older the allergy became something he managed rather than something that stopped him. His father later said that Ian’s nose often ran during training, and that he learned to breathe through it in a way that became part of his stroke.
At school, Thorpe was tall for his age, and he grew fast. By the time he was a teenager he was well over six feet tall, and his feet kept growing until they reached a size that became famous in itself. People who met him as a boy remember a quiet child, not a loud one. He was not the sort of boy who talked about himself all the time. He listened, he watched, and he worked. His coaches noticed early that his swimming was different. Most young swimmers kick hard and splash a lot. Thorpe’s kick was strong but his stroke was long and calm, and he seemed to travel further with each pull of his arms than the other children did.
His first coach of real importance was Doug Frost, who trained him at the Padstow Swim Club in Sydney. Frost saw a boy with a rare gift and a rare willingness to train, and he built Thorpe’s early career around long, steady work rather than short bursts of speed. Thorpe swam distance freestyle at first, the longer races that reward patience and a smooth stroke, and he won his first national titles while he was still at school. The work was hard, and the hours were long, but Thorpe liked the quiet of the pool in the early morning, when the water was still and the day had not yet begun.
The family made sacrifices for the swimming, as swimming families do. Early mornings meant early nights, and training meant that Thorpe missed many of the ordinary things other teenagers did. His parents drove him to training and to meets, and they watched him race at pools all over Australia. They did not push him in the way some parents push their children. They supported him, and they let his own love of the sport do the pushing. That support mattered, because the path he was on would soon become much harder and much more public than anything a boy from Milperra could have imagined.
The Teenager Who Broke Through at the World Championships
Thorpe’s rise was fast once it started. In 1997, when he was fourteen, he won the 400 metres freestyle at the Australian championships, and people in Australian swimming began to talk about him as a swimmer who could be special. A year later, in 1998, he went to the World Championships in Perth, and at the age of fifteen he won the 400 metres freestyle and helped Australia win the 4x200 metres freestyle relay. He was the youngest male swimmer ever to win a world title at that time, and the win in Perth made him famous in Australia almost overnight.
What struck people in Perth was not just the win but the way he swam. He did not sprint away from the field. He swam a steady, even race, and in the second half he pulled away from swimmers who were older and stronger than he was. His stroke stayed smooth when others began to struggle, and he touched the wall with a time that was fast enough to win a world title at fifteen. The crowd in Perth roared for him, and the newspapers began to call him the future of Australian swimming. He was still at school, and he went back to his classes after the championships with a world title in his bag.
The year that followed was a strange one for a teenager. He was now a public figure, and he had to learn how to be one while he was still growing up. He trained with Frost, and he kept winning. At the Pan Pacific Championships in Sydney in 1999 he won more titles, and his times kept getting faster. The whole country was now looking ahead to the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, and Thorpe was at the centre of those hopes. Australia wanted a home hero, and the shy boy from Milperra was the one the country had chosen.
There was a rivalry building too, and it would become one of the great stories of the Sydney Games. Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands was a freestyle sprinter with a powerful finish, and he was a few years older than Thorpe. The two of them raced each other in the years before Sydney, and the races were close. Van den Hoogenband was strong over 100 and 200 metres, while Thorpe was strongest over 200 and 400. Their meetings gave swimming fans something to look forward to, and they gave Thorpe a rival who pushed him to swim faster than he might have done on his own.
By the time the Sydney Olympics arrived, Thorpe was seventeen years old, and he was carrying the hopes of a whole country on his shoulders. He had a world title, he had a calm coach, and he had a family who kept him steady. What he did not have was any experience of an Olympic Games. No one knew how a seventeen-year-old would cope with the noise of a home crowd of seventeen thousand people, all of them shouting his name. The answer came on the first night of the swimming, and it was louder than anyone had expected.
Sydney 2000: A Home Games and a Night Nobody Forgot
The Sydney Olympics opened in September 2000, and the swimming was held at the Sydney International Aquatic Centre, a huge pool built for the Games. On the first night, Thorpe swam the 400 metres freestyle, his best event, and the crowd was so loud that it was hard to hear the starting signal. He swam the race in the way he always swam it, smooth and even, and he pulled away from the field in the second half. He touched the wall in a world record time, and the roar from the crowd was so strong that it seemed to shake the building. He was seventeen, he had just won his first Olympic gold medal, and he had done it in front of his own people.
Later that same night, he swam the last leg of the 4x100 metres freestyle relay, and that race became one of the most famous in Australian sporting history. The United States had never lost the men’s 4x100 metres freestyle relay at the Olympics, and the American team had talked before the race about how they would smash Australia like guitars. Thorpe was the anchor swimmer, and he dived in behind the Americans. In the last fifty metres he caught the American swimmer Gary Hall Jr, and he touched the wall first by a tiny margin. The crowd went wild, and the Australian team celebrated on the pool deck in a way that people still remember. Thorpe had helped beat the Americans in their own event, on the first night, in Sydney.
He won a third gold medal in the 4x200 metres freestyle relay, and he took a silver medal in the 200 metres freestyle behind van den Hoogenband, who swam a world record in that race. He also swam in the 4x100 metres medley relay, where Australia finished fourth. By the end of the Games he had three gold medals and one silver, and he was the most famous teenager in Australia. He had become the face of the Sydney Olympics, and his picture was on the front of every newspaper.
The fame that followed was huge, and it was not easy for a shy seventeen-year-old to carry. He was recognised everywhere he went, and he was asked to appear at events and to speak to crowds. He handled it with the help of his family and his coach, and he kept training, but the pressure of being Australia’s golden boy never really left him. He had done something extraordinary, and the country now expected him to do it again and again. That expectation would follow him for the rest of his career, and it would shape the choices he made in the years after Sydney.
Looking back, Sydney was the high point of Thorpe’s public life, and it is the Games that most Australians remember when they hear his name. He was young, he was fast, and he was swimming at home. The 400 metres freestyle world record, the relay win over the Americans, and the roar of the crowd are images that have stayed in Australian sport ever since. They are also the images that made Thorpe’s life harder, because after Sydney he was no longer just a swimmer. He was a symbol, and symbols are expected to be perfect.
The Rivalry, the Records, and the Athens Double
After Sydney, Thorpe kept winning, and his rivalry with van den Hoogenband kept growing. At the World Championships in Fukuoka in 2001, he won six gold medals, a feat that no swimmer had achieved at a single world championships before, and he broke world records in the 200, 400 and 800 metres freestyle. He was nineteen, and he was now the best freestyle swimmer in the world over every distance from 200 to 800 metres. The only race he could not win was the 100 metres freestyle, and even there he was close to the best in the world.
The 200 metres freestyle became the great race of the era. Thorpe, van den Hoogenband and the American swimmer Michael Phelps were all racing it, and the three of them were the fastest men in the world over that distance. At the 2004 Olympic trials in Australia, Thorpe made a famous mistake. He fell off the starting blocks in the 400 metres freestyle, which meant he was disqualified, and for a short time it looked as if he might not swim his best event at the Athens Olympics at all. His team-mate Craig Stevens gave up his place in the event so that Thorpe could swim it, a generous act that Australians still talk about. Thorpe repaid the favour in Athens by winning the gold medal.
The Athens Olympics in 2004 were Thorpe’s second Games, and they gave him the race he is perhaps most remembered for outside Australia. In the 200 metres freestyle, he raced van den Hoogenband and Phelps in what was called the race of the century, and he won it. He beat van den Hoogenband into second place and Phelps into third, and he did it with a strong last fifty metres that left the crowd on its feet. It was a race between three of the greatest swimmers of all time, and Thorpe won it at the age of twenty-one.
He also won the 400 metres freestyle in Athens, which gave him the double that few swimmers have ever achieved. He took a bronze medal in the 100 metres freestyle, behind van den Hoogenband and Phelps, and a silver medal in the 4x200 metres freestyle relay. By the end of Athens he had five Olympic gold medals, three silver medals and one bronze medal, and he was widely regarded as one of the greatest freestyle swimmers in history. He was twenty-one years old, and he had already done more than most swimmers do in a whole career.
The records tell part of the story. Thorpe broke twenty-two world records in his career, and he held world records in the 200, 400 and 800 metres freestyle at the same time. He won eleven world championship gold medals. But the numbers do not tell the whole story. The way he swam, smooth and calm, changed how people thought about freestyle. Coaches studied his stroke, young swimmers copied it, and for a few years the whole sport seemed to be trying to swim like Ian Thorpe.
Stepping Away, Coming Back, and Starting Again
In November 2006, Thorpe announced that he was retiring from swimming. He was twenty-four years old, and the news surprised many people. He said that he had lost his love for the sport, and that he wanted to do other things with his life. He had been swimming at the highest level since he was fifteen, and he had spent almost ten years under the brightest lights in Australian sport. He was tired, and he wanted to be free of the early mornings, the training, and the pressure to win.
The years after his retirement were not easy. He tried different things, and he travelled, and he wrote an autobiography called This Is Me, which was published in 2012. In that book, he wrote honestly about his life, and in 2014 he spoke publicly about being gay, in an interview on Australian television. He said that he had known for a long time and that he had been afraid to say it while he was competing, because he worried about how people would react. The response was warm and supportive, and many people praised him for his honesty. He later said that he wished he had spoken sooner, and that keeping the secret had been a heavy weight to carry.
He also spoke about depression, and about the dark times he had been through after his swimming career ended. He said that he had struggled with his mental health, and that he had needed help to get through it. That honesty mattered, because at the time very few famous sportsmen talked about depression in public. Thorpe’s words helped other people feel less alone, and they changed the way many Australians thought about the pressure that young sports stars live under.
In 2011, Thorpe tried to come back to swimming. He moved to Switzerland to train, and he aimed for the London Olympics in 2012. The comeback did not work. He was older, the sport had moved on, and at the Australian trials in 2012 he did not qualify for the team. He was honest about the failure, and he said that he had given it his best and that it had not been enough. It was a brave thing to try, and it was also a sad thing to watch, because the swimmer who had once been the fastest in the world could not get back to that level.
After the comeback ended, Thorpe built a new life. He worked in media, he did charity work, and he became involved in causes that mattered to him, including work for Indigenous Australian children and for young people. He stayed close to swimming, but as a voice and a supporter rather than as a swimmer. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to sport, and he remained one of the most respected names in Australian sport, even though his racing days were over.
What Thorpe Left Behind in the Water
Thorpe’s legacy in swimming is easy to see in the record books, and it is also easy to see in the pool. He won five Olympic gold medals, three silver medals and one bronze medal across two Olympic Games, and he won eleven gold medals at the world championships. He broke twenty-two world records. Those numbers put him among the greatest swimmers of all time, and in Australia he is still spoken of in the same breath as the greatest athletes the country has produced.
But his legacy is bigger than the medals. He changed the way Australian swimming thought about the freestyle stroke. His long, smooth technique became a model for coaches and young swimmers, and his success showed that an Australian swimmer could dominate the world over several distances at once. The generation of Australian swimmers who came after him grew up watching him win in Sydney and Athens, and many of them have said that watching Thorpe was the reason they started swimming seriously.
He also left a different kind of legacy, one that has nothing to do with times or medals. By speaking honestly about his sexuality and about his depression, he showed that a famous sportsman could be honest about his life and still be respected. He showed that the strongest swimmer in the world could also be a person who struggled, and that struggling did not make him weak. That message reached far beyond swimming, and it is one of the reasons his story still matters to people who have never watched a race.
Today, Thorpe lives a quieter life than he did in his twenties, and he is remembered in Australia with real affection. The Thorpedo nickname is still used, and the images from Sydney 2000 are still shown whenever the Olympics come around. He was a teenager who carried a country’s hopes, a swimmer who broke records for fun, and a man who learned, in public, how to live honestly. That is a full story, and it is one that still has something to teach.
I also think about the relay team, and about the men who swam with him in Sydney, because that race belonged to all four of them. Michael Klim, Chris Fydler, Ashley Callus and Thorpe won the 4x100 metres freestyle relay together, and Thorpe was the anchor, the swimmer who had to finish the job. He did not do it alone. He did it because his team-mates had put him in a position to win, and because they believed in him. I think that is an important part of his story. We remember Thorpe, but we should also remember the team, and the way they celebrated together on the pool deck. That celebration, with the four of them hugging and shouting, is one of the great images in Australian sport, and it belongs to all of them.
There is also something I want to say about Doug Frost, his coach, because Frost is a big part of this story. Frost trained Thorpe from a young age, and he built the programme that made him the best in the world. He was a calm coach, and he understood Thorpe, and he knew when to push him and when to let him rest. When Thorpe retired, Frost spoke about him with pride, and he said that Thorpe had been a special swimmer. A great coach does not just teach technique. A great coach understands the person, and Frost understood Thorpe. Their partnership is one of the great coach-athlete partnerships in Australian sport, and it deserves to be remembered.
I think about the young swimmers who watch Thorpe’s races today, and who see a seventeen-year-old winning gold at a home Olympics. They see that it is possible to be young and to be great, and they see that it is possible to handle pressure. But I hope they also see the other side of his story, the side where fame was hard, and where he struggled, and where he had to be honest about who he was. That is the full story, and it is the story that matters most. Thorpe was not just a swimmer. He was a person, and he had to learn to live with being famous, and that was harder than any race he ever swam.
My Take:
I think Ian Thorpe’s story is really about what happens when a country puts all its hope on a teenager, and I find that part of it sad as well as exciting. When I watch the old pictures from Sydney 2000, I see a seventeen-year-old boy standing on the pool deck while seventeen thousand people shout his name, and I wonder how anyone that young is supposed to carry that. He did it beautifully, and he smiled, and he won, but the smile does not tell you what it cost him. I think we ask too much of young sports stars, and Thorpe is the clearest example I know.
What I admire most about him is the way he swam. I am not a swimmer, and I have never raced in a pool, but even I can see the difference between Thorpe and other swimmers. He did not fight the water. He moved through it in a long, calm way that made the whole thing look easy, and I think that calm was his real gift. Anyone can train hard. Not everyone can stay calm when the whole world is watching, and Thorpe could do that at seventeen. I think that calm came from the fact that he loved the quiet of the pool, the early mornings when the water was still. He was at home in the water in a way that most people are at home in their own house.
I also think about the chlorine allergy, because it is such a small detail and yet it tells you so much. A boy who is allergic to the pool becomes the greatest swimmer in the world. That is not a story about talent alone. It is a story about a child who refused to let a small problem stop him, and who kept going back to the water even when it made him ill. I think about that when I hear people say that they cannot do something because of one small obstacle. Thorpe’s whole career is an answer to that kind of thinking. He did not wait for the problem to go away. He learned to live with it, and he built a career around it.
The relay race on the first night in Sydney is the moment I keep coming back to. The Americans had never lost that relay, and they had talked before the race about beating Australia easily. Thorpe dived in behind, and in the last fifty metres he caught the American swimmer and won. I love that race because it was not just about one man. It was about a team, and it was about a home crowd, and it was about a country that had waited a hundred years to host the Olympics. When Thorpe touched the wall, the whole stadium seemed to shake, and I think that moment belongs to Australia as much as it belongs to him. It was the night when a home Games became real.
But I also feel uneasy about what came after Sydney. Thorpe was seventeen, and from that night on he was never just a swimmer again. He was a symbol, and symbols do not get to have bad days. Every race he swam after that was measured against Sydney, and every time he lost a race people asked what was wrong with him. I think that is unfair, and I think it is something we do to young stars without thinking. We love them when they win, and we forget that they are still children who need to grow up. Thorpe grew up in public, and that is a hard way to grow up.
The Athens race in 2004, the one people called the race of the century, is the race that proves to me that Thorpe was truly great. He was racing van den Hoogenband, who had beaten him in Sydney, and Michael Phelps, who was on his way to becoming the greatest swimmer of all time, and Thorpe beat them both. That is not luck. That is a swimmer at the very top of his game, in a race that had everything on the line, doing what he had trained for. I think that race is the best answer to anyone who says that Thorpe was only famous because he swam at home. In Athens, he was not at home, and he still won.
I have a lot of respect for the way he retired. He was twenty-four, and he could have kept swimming for money and for fame, and many people expected him to. Instead he said that he had lost his love for the sport, and he walked away. That takes honesty, because it is easy to keep doing something you are good at even when you no longer love it. It is much harder to admit that the love is gone and to start again. I think many people stay in jobs and in lives that no longer make them happy because they are afraid to leave, and Thorpe’s decision is a reminder that leaving is sometimes the brave thing to do.
His comeback attempt in 2011 and 2012 is the part of his story that I find most human. He tried to come back, and he failed, and he said so honestly. There was no excuse and no blame. He trained hard, he raced, and he was not fast enough. I think that failure is as important as his wins, because it shows that even the greatest swimmer in the world cannot turn back time. Sport moves on, and bodies change, and the young swimmers who were once watching you are now beating you. Thorpe accepted that, and he moved on with his life. That is a lesson in dignity that I think a lot of people could learn from.
I also want to say something about his honesty after his career ended. When he spoke about being gay, and when he spoke about depression, he was doing something that very few famous sportsmen had done before. He was saying that the strongest swimmer in the world could also be a person who had been afraid, and who had struggled, and who had needed help. I think that honesty changed things in Australia, and I think it helped a lot of young people who were going through the same things. It is easy to be honest when you have nothing to lose. It is much harder to be honest when you are famous and everyone is watching, and Thorpe did it anyway.
There is a part of me that wishes he had spoken sooner, and I know he has said the same thing himself. He kept his secret for years because he was afraid of how people would react, and that fear must have been heavy to carry while he was also carrying the hopes of a whole country. I think about the young swimmers who are still afraid today, and I hope that Thorpe’s example makes it easier for them. No one should have to win five Olympic gold medals before they feel safe enough to tell the truth about who they are.
I think his large feet and his long arms are often talked about as if they were the whole reason he was fast, and I do not think that is fair. Plenty of tall people with large feet never win a race. Thorpe was fast because he trained for years, because he had a great coach in Doug Frost, because he stayed calm under pressure, and because he loved the water. His body helped, but it was not the whole story. I think we like to explain great athletes with one simple reason, but the truth is always more complicated. Thorpe’s success was built on hard work, good coaching, a supportive family, and a rare gift for staying calm. Take any one of those away and the story might have been different.
The thing that stays with me most is the image of Thorpe as a boy, standing at the edge of the pool in the early morning, with his nose blocked and his eyes sore from the chlorine, getting in the water anyway. That boy did not know that he would win five Olympic gold medals. He did not know that he would become the face of an Olympic Games. He just knew that he liked swimming, and he kept going back. I think that is the real lesson of his life. You do not have to know where the road leads. You just have to keep showing up, and to keep doing the thing you love, even when it is hard.
I also think about his sister Christina, and about his parents, because they are part of the story too. They drove him to training, they watched him race, and they kept him steady when the fame became too much. Behind every great athlete there is a family that made sacrifices, and Thorpe’s family made them quietly. They did not seek the spotlight, and they did not try to take credit for his wins. They just supported him, and that support is part of why he was able to cope with the pressure for as long as he did. I think we should remember the families as well as the athletes.
If I had to sum up what Ian Thorpe teaches me, I would say this. Talent matters, but it is not enough on its own. You need hard work, you need people who support you, you need to be honest with yourself about when to stop, and you need the courage to be honest about who you are. Thorpe had all of those things, and he also had a rare gift for making the hardest thing in the world look easy. He was the Thorpedo, and for a few golden years he was the fastest swimmer on the planet. But the part of his story that I will remember longest is not the medals. It is the man who came after the medals, the man who told the truth about his life and who helped other people feel less alone. That is a legacy that no world record can match.
I also keep thinking about what it means to be a symbol. After Sydney, Thorpe was not just a swimmer. He was a symbol of Australia, and symbols are expected to be perfect. They are expected to win every race, to smile every time, and to never show weakness. That is an impossible standard, and it is one that no teenager should have to live up to. I think we need to be kinder to young stars, and to remember that they are people first and athletes second. Thorpe’s story is a reminder of that, and it is one that I hope people remember the next time a young athlete becomes famous overnight.
There is one more thing I want to say, and it is about the water itself. Thorpe loved the water, and he loved the quiet of the early morning pool. I think that love is what carried him through the hardest times. When the fame became too much, and when the pressure became too much, he could still go to the pool, and he could still swim, and he could still feel at home in the water. That is a gift, and it is one that I envy. To have a place where you feel at home, no matter what else is happening in your life, is a wonderful thing. For Thorpe, that place was the pool, and it was there from the time he was five years old until the day he retired. I hope he still finds that peace in the water today.
I also think about the next generation of Australian swimmers, and about what Thorpe gave them. Young swimmers in Australia grow up watching his races from Sydney and Athens, and they see a swimmer who was the best in the world and who did it with a smooth, calm stroke. They try to copy that stroke, and they try to copy his calm, and that makes Australian swimming better. He did not just win medals. He set a standard, and that standard is still there. Every Australian freestyle swimmer since Thorpe has been measured against him, and that is a sign of how great he was. I think that is the true measure of a champion. It is not just what you win. It is what you leave behind for the people who come after you, and Thorpe left a great deal.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Ian Thorpe born and where did he grow up?
Ian Thorpe was born on 13 October 1982 in Sydney, Australia, and he grew up in the suburb of Milperra. He started swimming at the age of five, following his older sister Christina into the pool, even though he was allergic to chlorine.
How many Olympic gold medals did Ian Thorpe win?
Thorpe won five Olympic gold medals across two Olympic Games. He won three gold medals at Sydney 2000 and two more at Athens 2004, along with three silver medals and one bronze medal, giving him nine Olympic medals in total.
Why was Ian Thorpe called the Thorpedo?
The nickname Thorpedo is a mix of his surname, Thorpe, and the word torpedo, and it was given to him because of his speed and his smooth, powerful way of moving through the water. The name became famous during the Sydney 2000 Olympics and stayed with him for the rest of his career.
What happened in the famous 4x100 metres freestyle relay at Sydney 2000?
Australia beat the United States in the men’s 4x100 metres freestyle relay, an event the Americans had never lost at the Olympics before. Thorpe swam the last leg and caught the American swimmer Gary Hall Jr in the final metres to win by a tiny margin, in front of a huge home crowd.
Why did Ian Thorpe retire so young?
Thorpe announced his retirement in November 2006 at the age of twenty-four, saying that he had lost his love for swimming. He had been racing at the highest level since he was fifteen, and he wanted to move on to other things in his life after almost a decade under intense pressure.
Did Ian Thorpe try to make a comeback?
Yes, Thorpe tried to return to swimming in 2011 and aimed for the London Olympics in 2012. The comeback did not succeed, and he failed to qualify for the Australian team at the trials in 2012, after which he accepted the result and moved on with his life outside the pool.
