With Ian Thorpe admitted to rehab this week, the spotlight is on what happens to sporting heroes when they fall to earth. With all we now know, is ‘sporting superhero’ still a dream worth aspiring to?
Ian Thorpe is a legend. He dedicated (some might say sacrificed) his young life to being the very best in the world at one thing. And he was.
He won 46 medals for Australia. He made mountains of money, for himself, for the businesses who rode in his wake, and for the charities that he chose to support.
At the height of his success and fame, The Thorpedo could do no wrong. No-one shone brighter. He was all that was great and good about that glorious, golden time that was the Sydney Olympics.
But then, of course, it had to come to an end. It’s impossible for anyone, no matter how talented, how dedicated, how determined, to stay at the top of their game when the top of their game requires a physical strength and stamina that is, quite simply, super-human.
And what happens when it’s over is often brutal. The media turns. They begin to pick on an athlete’s personal life, their social circle, how they spend their money, where they choose to live. They begin to hunt for bad news rather than good, and for someone who has spent their life cultivating the necessary ego to slay competition in the pool, this must be a fall to earth that is especially bruising.
The past week has been particularly dreadful for Ian Thorpe. The press reported he was in rehab for alcohol and depression. His rep denied it. Then, yesterday police were called to a Sydney street where Thorpe was allegedly acting strangely, trying to get into a car that wasn’t his. The story went out that he was ‘dazed’ at the scene, and he was taken to hospital. Now his rep says he is, indeed, in rehab.
“He’s battling with his health issues at the moment, he’s having a tough time, but hopefully in six months time he’ll be out the other side,” his dad Ken said today.
In the past, Thorpe has been honest about fighting depression, throughout his swimming career and beyond. And whatever the truth of his current situation, he is certainly not alone in being an elite sporting hero who has struggled with re-entry into the ‘real’ world. Matthew Mitcham, Grant Hackett, Susie Maroney. Think of the current generation of ‘troubled’ young swimmers, James Magnussen and Nick D’Arcy among them.
So, when the world of high-level sport is so brutal and unforgiving, why is it still held up as a desirable dream that we should want our children to aspire to? “He’ll play for Australia one day,” your well-meaning dad says as he watches your son kick around a ball in the park. “You’ll be up at 4am for training with that one,” says your friend at swimming class.
Swimming lessons, tennis tutoring, Saturday sport – these are all so much part of our children’s lives, of course, for fun and teamwork. But everyone wants to be good, everyone wants to win, and many of us harbour an unspoken hope that one of our kids might be special, might be golden enough to be chosen to enter that glorified world, to become a sporting ‘hero’.
No thanks. It is not what I want for my kids. I would not want a life for them that sets them up for the fact that at absolute dream-level best, they sacrifice everything else in their young life – friends, social life, sibling relationships, lie-ins – for a chance to compete, shine brightly and then combust, ending up washed up and lost in their 20s.
Of course I know this is not the story for all swimmers and sports people. There are plenty of former ‘heroes’ who are leading happy lives, with second acts that are fulfilling and rich. But there are enough cautionary tales to convince me that ‘sporting hero’ is not a vocation I’d hope for for my own little people.
Which is just as well, because my kids are pretty ordinary swimmers.
Would you be happy for your kids to pursue a sporting dream?