Ian Thorpe becomes the highlight of the Australian Selection Trials

Ian Thorpe becomes the highlight of the Australian Selection Trials

With his return to the competitive swimming, the Australian comeback king, Ian Thorpe is in the spotlight of Swimming Australia, as they want to see him qualify for the Australian Swimming team to the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The 29-year-old Thorpe, who won five gold medals in the 200m and 400m freestyle events at the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Olympic Games, has been struggling hard to prove his mettle in the Australian for the 2012 London Games.

With just few days left in the Olympic trials, the mystery of Thorpe’s eligibility to qualify in the Australian squad. The Australian selection trials are starting on March 15 in Adelaide. Despite of his sluggish swim at the last month’s Zurich International
Meet, where he swam a pedestrian 52.28 seconds in the 100m freestyle, the Australian Swimming Head Coach, Leigh Nugent has utter belief that Thorpe will come strong at the Australian trials.

Thorpe retired from competitive swimming in 2006 due to his deteriorated performance at the international levels of swimming. With his early retirement, he asserted that he has gained all he wanted to accomplish but after five years of retirement, he realised
that he still has a lot to achieve.

The 29-year-old Thorpe then made a comeback to aggressive swimming in February 2011, and started training under the guidance of Gennadi Touretski. Thorpe has competed in a lot of races since last November but he has failed to grab any medal in the 100m freestyle
event.

Thorpe showed continuous improvement in his timings but at the Zurich meet, he went pretty slower than his season’s personal best.

At first, Nugent was disappointed but now he expressed firm belief in his ability to bring competition to the selection trials. On the other hand, Thorpe’s friend and former world champion, Grant Hackett has advised him to shift him focus to the 200m freestyle
event as Thorpe has a better chance to accomplish his London qualification dream in the 200m event.

Furthermore, it would be interesting to see how Thorpe performs in 100m event and whether he participates in the 200m or not.

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Posted by Mursil Mehmood Butt on Mar 10 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry