Beating time in the race to reclaim sporting glory

Ploughing his way to a triumphant return after retirement, freestyler Grant Hackett joins international greats as Mohammed Ali, Pele and Niki Lauda, along with Australian champions Bob Simpson and Mark Occhilupo, on list of athletic fairy tales.

Surfing - aust surfer Mark Occhilupo competing in Pipeline Masters event in Hawaii 19 Dec 1999. a/ct /Surfing

Ploughing his way to a triumphant return after retirement, freestyler Grant Hackett joins international greats as Mohammed Ali, Pele and Niki Lauda, along with Australian champions Bob Simpson and Mark Occhilupo, on the growing list of athletic fairy tales.

Hackett’s explanation that ­upheaval in his personal life inspired his return to the pool hints at the varied motivations — from unfinished business to battles against addiction — behind legendary sporting comebacks.

Heavyweight boxer George Foreman’s biggest fight was against his age when, at 45, he defeated Michael Moorer in 1994. When Foreman knelt in prayer, the crowd cheered the oldest man to ever win a world heavyweight crown, also breaking the record for the longest interval between one world championship and the next.

Ali, as Cassius Clay, had secured the world heavyweight championship by defeating Sonny Liston in February 1964. But when he ­refused to sign up for the US Army’s Vietnam War draft, arguing “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Vietcong”, Clay was stripped of his titles and sent into enforced retirement with his boxing licence ­suspended from 1967.

In 1970 he eventually returned to the ring. It then took another four years to ­regain the world heavyweight title, when he triumphed against the then undefeated George Foreman in The Rumble in the Jungle.

Brazilian soccer great Edson ­Arantes do Nascimento, or simply Pele, walked away after his team lost to Portugal in the 1966 World Cup, saying he would never play in a World Cup again.

But Brazilian team coach Mario Zagallo urged Pele, then 29, to ­return to the side to contest the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Pele scored three goals in six games, including the opening goal in the 4-1 final victory against Italy.

Australian tennis great Margaret Court held 13 Grand Slam singles and nine doubles titles when she retired after the 1966 Wimbledon tournament. Returning to the court in 1968, she contested Wimbledon and Australian Open titles in 1969. She won four majors in 1970 and the Australian Open in 1971. After the birth of her first child in 1972 Court claimed three majors in 1973. In 1975, a year after the birth of her second child, Court won the US Open, eventually claiming 11 Grand Slam singles titles, 10 in the doubles and seven in mixed doubles.

The comeback of frail, bandaged Formula F1 driver Niki Lauda in the 1976 Italian Grand Prix stunned spectators. Just six weeks earlier, a priest had read Lauda the last rites when he was pulled from his flaming Ferrari in a horror crash at Germany’s demanding Nuerburgring track.

Lauda missed two races before returning to finish fourth in the Italian Grand Prix on September 12, 1976. Later saying he had no thought of ­retiring “because I knew how things go, I knew about the risks”, he won the Formula One World Champion in 1977 and again in 1984.

Marrickville-born batsman Bob Simpson made his Test debut against South Africa in 1957, taking over as Australian captain in the 1963-64 season until early 1968. Despite exceptional performances against India that season, Simpson announced his retirement. He had spent a decade playing grade cricket for Western Suburbs when Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket launch robbed the Australian international team of star players.

At 41, Simpson returned to captain NSW and Australia, with fast-bowler Jeff Thomson the only experienced player when Australia met India in the 1977 Test.

In a morale-building 3-2 series victory, Simpson made 539 runs, including a first-innings century in the fifth Test at Adelaide, to make him the oldest Australian to score a Test century on home soil.

After almost a decade that ­secured three consecutive championships for the Chicago Bulls, star basketballer Michael Jordan quit in 1993 to take up a minor league baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox.

In 1995 Jordan announced his return to the Chicago Bulls in a press release stating “I’m back.”

The next day he scored 19 points against the Indiana Pacers, leading the Bulls to another three championships between 1996-98. He quit again in January 1999, but returned for another two seasons with the Washington Wizards.

Teen surf phenomenon Mark Occhilupo left school in Year 10 to compete on the waves, ranking third in 1984 when he won his first Pro Junior, taking titles again in 1985 and 1986.

In March 1988, his desperate mother called radio host John Laws to admit her son, a professional sportsman, was in Hawaii self-destructing on drugs.

It was the beginning of Occhilupo’s 10-year absence from world rankings. A short-lived comeback in 1992 ended in a breakdown.

Gradually regaining his fitness, in 1997 Occhilupo completed his first full year on the world tour in a decade, finishing runner-up to Kelly Slater for the world title.

In 1999 he won three of 13 events and, at age 33, claimed the world championship.