Ian Thorpe on finding Mr Right, fatherhood and life beyond the swimming pool

AFTER a difficult year and a very public declaration, Ian Thorpe says his first foray into dating has been ‘an absolute mess’.

IT’S a squally, grey day and the tide is coming in.

Every third wave crashes over the wall of the empty pool at Bondi Icebergs, spraying Ian Thorpe’s hulking 1.96-metre frame, creating a puddle at his size-17 feet.

Thorpe doesn’t flinch.

As he poses for photos on the floor of the drained ocean baths, Australia’s greatest swimmer, one of our most popular and successful athletes, is centred, calm in the eye of the storm.

Just over a year since he came out as gay to the world – telling TV interviewer Michael Parkinson, “I’m not straight” – Thorpe, 33, has finally made peace with himself.

And, despite a serious ongoing shoulder injury, the five-time Olympic gold medallist is stronger than ever.

“I’ve had a really great year,” he says later, as we settle ourselves at a table in the kiosk above the pool.

“There have been times when I thought, ‘This is not what I expected’, but throughout all of it, I’ve been really happy living my life with authenticity and honesty.

“It’s not like everything’s been great because I came out,” he adds.

“There have been ups and downs, but progressively I feel like I’m a lot more comfortable in myself, and I’m looking forward to the future, which is really nice.”

That future, he says, will be here in Australia.

Early this year, he settled in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs and, after 10 years hopping between here, Los Angeles and Switzerland, has no plans to leave.

He’s also actively looking for someone to share that future with.

Olympic swimming champ Ian Thorpe says dating is difficult. Picture: Hugh Stewart

This is where things get tricky.

At home as he is in the pool, there’s one place Thorpe finds himself all at sea.

“Dating’s been a lot harder than I thought it would be,” he confesses.

“It’s an absolute mess out there! I’m like, ‘Where are all the normal people?’ “I’ve never really dated, so I’ve come in being almost completely blindsided by this.

“I think if someone puts an effort into a date, then full points – it’s not like I’m a hard marker. But there are some nut cases. It’s just a bit weird.

“But that’s the dating scene – I say it and I laugh and I’ve got a smile on my face, so it’s not that bad.”

Thorpe’s checklist is short: Mr Right must a) not be crazy, and b) be based in Australia.

He steers clear of dating apps and websites, preferring to “go more old-school and meet people in real life” at restaurants and friends’ homes.

He’s been on a couple of second and third dates, but no “relationship” has developed.

“I’ve mostly met great guys but, occasionally, I’ve met a couple of douche-y guys as well. It’s enough motivation for me to want to settle down with someone away from that scene,” Thorpe says.

Listening to Thorpe talk openly and confidently about his search for Mr Right after years spent denying his sexuality, it’s impossible not to feel like cheering.

We joke about using water as a metaphor for his new life.

Ian Thorpe: back in the swim. Diving in at the deep end.

“Up the creek without a paddle,” he says with a laugh.

Asked whether his fame is a help or a hindrance in meeting men, he quips: “I’ll use it as an excuse if I’m not doing well.”

This is Thorpey 2.0: self-aware, funny, light of spirit.

Ian Thorpe was nicknamed the Thorpedo during his successful swimming career which started when he was a teenager.

It’s been a long, hard road to get here.

Australia’s most successful Olympian achieved fame at 15 years of age, legendary status at just 17, and he’s lived his life in public since.

Over the course of a stellar career, the man dubbed the ‘Thorpedo’ broke 22 world records and won five Olympic gold medals, as well as 10 Commonwealth Games gold medals.

At the Sydney Olympics in 2000, he took home three golds and two silvers.

With the longest stroke in swimming history and a powerful six-beat kick, he was poetry in motion in the water.

He was also gracious, well-spoken and clean-living, and his character was praised as much as his swimming.

Everyone loved Thorpey.

But his success took its toll, and he first sought help for mental health issues in his teens.

Thorpe is looking for love. Picture: Hugh Stewart

Thorpe hopes he will be able to swim again after injuring his shoulder. Picture: Hugh Stewart

In his 2012 autobiography, This is Me, Thorpe revealed he’d considered suicide and had drunk huge quantities of alcohol to deal with “crippling depression”.

Last year, he checked himself into rehab.

Thorpe was also hounded by questions about his sexuality from the age of 16.

Early on, he says, he felt he had backed himself into a corner.

“Because it was always put to me in a kind of accusatory tone that it’s a bad thing, I thought ‘I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond, as a child and then as an adult, to this,’” he says.

“That was the problem – I was asked when I was far too young and then my response was ‘I’m not’.

“Then I didn’t want to change the lie. It makes it very difficult.

“I felt like I’d betrayed people by being dishonest about it.

“But it’s done now,” he adds.

“I hope it makes it easier for whoever is the next athlete who wants to come out.”

Thorpe says once he decided to tell the truth, he wanted the world to know.

“The first person I told was a friend, but then it was like bang, bang, bang, next person – I did it all in a day,” he says.

“I really woke up one day and I said, ‘I’m ready to come out. I’m over this.’ It’s as simple as that.”

Two weeks later, he gave the interview to Parkinson and made international news.

“I was asked, ‘Why don’t you just get on with it without being publicly out until you get used to it?’” Thorpe says.

“But I kind of thought that wasn’t fronting up to being honest with myself. So I said, ‘No, I’m going to come out publicly; I’m comfortable with coming out to everyone.’”

Sir Michael Parkinson interviews Ian Thorpe, where he revealed he is gay.

Thorpe’s mum, Margaret, and dad, Ken, were surprised by their son’s revelation, but gave him love and support.

“I get a lot of letters from young people asking, ‘How do you come out?’ and I think, ‘I’m the wrong person to ask!’” says Thorpe, who was once linked to US swimming champion Amanda Beard and sports presenter Lee Watson.

“But you get a team behind you. You work out the friend, or parent, who’s going to support you the most, and you keep on adding people to the team.”

The idea that he might pave the way for other gay people struggling with their sexuality didn’t occur to him.

“I didn’t understand that part at all,” he admits.

“I wish someone had explained that to me a lot earlier. I probably would have come out earlier if I realised.

“I didn’t think it was relevant, I didn’t think it mattered. But it does.”

In the distance, whales are breaching out beyond the break, where wetsuit-clad surfers brave the wild weather.

But the schoolkids leaning over the railing above Bondi Icebergs have spotted something much more exciting.

Their high voices drift down, bringing a smile to the champion swimmer’s face.

“It’s Ian Thorpe!” a young boy exclaims.

His mate dismisses the notion: “Nah, that’s not Ian Thorpe.”

Thorpey looks up at them, waves and flashes them a big grin.

They collapse in fits of embarrassed giggles.

Thorpe says that it’s good to be home.

He loves the “crisp colours” and “unique smells” and is finding joy in simple things.

His days begin with a training session – usually a long walk – and then go one of two ways.

“It’s either out for a long breakfast or a rushed breakfast and off to an office or a meeting or prepping notes – I do a lot of corporate speaking, which I love,” he says.

“As it warms up, my morning stroll will become a little bit longer and more likely end at the beach.”

In February, he had a fourth operation on his troublesome left shoulder – a full shoulder replacement – and wore a cast for six weeks.

After a failed comeback to make the London 2012 Olympic team, he was ready to leave competitive swimming behind.

But the idea of not being able to swim at all, he says, is “horrifying”.

“It’s basically the final surgery I can have,” he says.

“If it doesn’t work, I have to have my shoulder fused together. It’s really serious.”

Doctors initially told him he wouldn’t swim again, but he started lifting weights two weeks ago and now, he says, “it’s probably a 50-50 chance”.

“Even though I’ve had the injury after my career ended, it’s still not a nice feeling not to be able to do what you really enjoy,” he adds.

“But I feel like there’s light at the end of the tunnel because I’ve been going through this for 12 months and I feel like I’m getting somewhere.

“So I don’t feel as deflated about the shoulder as I have.”

Thorpe was named GQ magazine’s Man of Influence last year and has just finished shooting a documentary series, DNA Nation for SBS, in which he and two other high-profile Australians trace their genetic origins back 200,000 years.

He’s also a mentor to a “super-talented” young male swimmer who he thinks can win gold at the Rio 2016 Olympics (“I won’t say who it is because I don’t want to put the pressure on him – that would be horrible”) and hopes to commentate at the Games.

Pressure is something Thorpe knows well.

But it’s a measure of the man that he harbours no bitterness about the enormous demands placed on him from a very young age.

“You get to choose what you let get to you,” he says, adding that he feels like he’s now enjoying the kind of carefree teenage exuberance that his Olympic ambition and the glare of public adulation denied him.

“In coming out, it’s like having a second puberty,” he says.

“I’m not talking about who I’m seeing; I’m talking about how I feel about life. It’s discovering things for the first time, or rediscovering them and being shocked at how it’s different.

“I used to be like this when I was a lot younger – it’s closer to my personality. I’m not as on edge about what I’m doing; I don’t feel as exposed.

“I guess it comes from being a lot more comfortable in myself.”

Thorpe has been “pleasantly surprised” at the public’s reaction to his coming out.

“People are almost a little aloof about it, like they just don’t care,” he says.

“They wish me well, but it’s not important to them. I think it’s a very mature response and it’s the response I appreciate the most.

“It’s interesting how people could speak with such vitriol and passion on this issue only 10 years ago and now those voices are silent.

“I think it’s great that Australia is at a point where we’re discussing what the legislation around marriage equality would be.

“A lot of people are disappointed with how delayed it’s been but I think now we’re on the path of getting that decision right and that will happen very soon.”

Thorpe has spoken in the past about his desire to have kids and he’s still keen.

“I don’t see it happening in the next few years – maybe in five to 10 years,” he says.

“My preference would be to do it with someone else but, if the time comes and I haven’t met that person, I’d be willing to do it by myself as well.”

Over his life, Thorpe has spent an incalculable number of hours swimming laps, just him and the black line beneath.

Thorpe graces the cover of this week’s Sunday Style men’s issue.

This Is Me, by Ian Thorpe.

Up and back, up and back. Tumble turn to tumble turn. It’s a kind of meditation.

He is one of the few, he says, to enjoy the training more than the competitive side of swimming; he simply loves to swim.

“As the water ripples away, it almost feels as if your worries and anxieties about life seem to go away,” he says.

“I find solitude in the pool. I like being left alone, having time to myself; I can listen to what the water’s doing, how my stroke’s moving, how I feel in the water.

“I kind of self monitor while going for a relaxing swim.”

Having achieved equilibrium in his personal life, Thorpe is not abandoning his first love.

“They told me I wouldn’t swim again, but that was before,” he says.

“I’m now six months post-operation and I’ve started exercising again. I haven’t given up on being able to swim.”

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