Along with Michael Gross ("the Albatross") and Alexander Popov ("the Tsar"), Michael Phelps ("the Shark") and Ian Thorpe ("the Thorpedo") were the swim.
Legends that have won so much, conquering an aura of unbeatablity. Absolute giants.
Among the women Federica Pellegrini, here with king Phelps, is the queen and the rivalry remains, even amorous, with Laure Manadou, the beautiful Franco-Dutch woman. Also worth mentioning are Sara Sjorstrom and Franziska Van Almsick.
Ian Thorpe
Ian Thorpe, a troubled champion. A force of nature but a fragility that oppressed him. The difficulty, the enormous pressure to be number one. His private life invaded, raped. The planet looked at him and he would have liked to shut the door.
Ian James Thorpe, born 13 October 1982, is an Australian retired swimmer who specialised in freestyle, but also competed in backstroke and the individual medley. He has won five Olympic gold medals. At the age of 14, his victory in the 400 metre freestyle at the 1998 Perth World Championships made him the youngest-ever individual male World Champion. After that victory, Thorpe dominated the 400 m freestyle, winning the event at every Olympic, World, Commonwealth and Pan Pacific Swimming Championships until his break after the 2004 Olympics in Athens. At the 2001 World Aquatics Championships, he became the first person to win six gold medals in one World Championship. Aside from 13 individual long-course world records, Thorpe anchored the Australian relay teams, numbering the victories in the 4 × 100 m and the 4 × 200 m freestyle relays in Sydney among his five relay world records. His wins in the 200 m and 400 m and his bronze in the 100 m freestyle at the 2004 Summer Olympics made him the only male to have won medals in the 100–200–400 combination. He picked up the nickname "Thorpedo" because of his speed in swimming. Ian announced his retirement from competitive swimming in November 2006, citing waning motivation; he made a brief comeback in 2011 and 2012. In total, the Australian has won eleven World Championship gold medals; this is the third-highest number of gold medals won by any swimmer. He was the first person to have been named Swimming World Swimmer of the Year four times.
For the main coach of the Australian team, Don Talbot, Ian Thorpe was a 'Ferrari'. When he broke the world record in the 400 m freestyle he was "accelerating like a Ferrari. I've seen other athletes accelerating, but he (Thorpe) looks like a Ferrari when he wants to take off. He is the greatest athlete I have ever seen swimming and perhaps the best athlete the world has ever seen," said Talbot, who has 40 years of experience.
On March 5, 2005, Ian Thorpe met Michael Schumacher at Australian GP in Melbourne. And this is what brings him closer to the Reds, an exciting combination.
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps, the alien, the absolute. No human being has ever been in the water like him. The real Superman reincarnated. His body is made of non-terrestrial matter. Simply the greatest of all, he dominated the specialty, he crushed it. Difficult to say more.
His feet measure is 50, the opening of his arms is bigger than his height, his joints are extremely flexible. Practically a fish. When his hands and arms entered the water, they produced no bubbles. He especially swam with his legs and in turns he pushed himself particularly deep and for a long time, avoiding the waves. He trained in water for 5 hours a day 6 days a week, an average of 16 km a day, for a total of three times around the world. He was training his legs in particular by wearing an 8 kg belt and swimming vertically without using his arms, floating like dolphins. Still with the same belt, he also performed ten sets of jumps, for a total of 100 per day every three days, from the bottom of the pool until he came one meter out of the water. All this combined with an unshakable will that pushed him to never give up. He ate five times a day consuming 8000 calories per day, three times those consumed by an average adult man. He never skipped trainings or got sick or injured, he was always on time, giving all of himself 365 days a year. And he did it from the age of seven until he stopped. He was a perfect machine. Michael Phelps is not human, definitely not.
“You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the further you get.”
“If you want to be the best, you have to do things that other people aren’t willing to do.”
“Records are always made to be broken, no matter what they are.”
“Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to.”
Michael Phelps
Michael Fred Phelps II, born June 30, 1985, is an American former competitive swimmer and the most successful and most decorated Olympian of all time, with a total of 28 medals. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals (23), Olympic gold medals in individual events (13), and Olympic medals in individual events (16). When he won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, Michael broke fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the American had already tied the record of eight medals of any color at a single Games by winning six gold and two bronze medals. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four gold and two silver medals, and at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he won five gold medals and one silver. This made him the most successful athlete of the Games for the fourth Olympics in a row.
Michael is the long course world record holder in the men's 400-meter individual medley as well as the former long course world record holder in the 200-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly, and 200-meter individual medley. He has won 82 medals in major international long course competitions, of which 65 were gold, 14 silver, and three bronze, spanning the Olympics, the World Championships, and the Pan Pacific Championships.
He is considered the greatest swimmer of all time.
Michael Phelps with his American colleague Missy Franklin.
The others
Swimming is a tough and fascinating sport, a challenge with yourself. A life of solitude with a black line before the eyes, An unheard of mental effort. Love and hate. And the most beautiful body of all, that of swimmers, shaped by water. It’s them, swimmers, the Ferraris of the human body. Beautiful and powerful, long and elegant muscles, broad shoulders and slim waist. Creatures made for water, light and efficient.
Alexandr Popov
“As reliable as a Swiss watch”, his coach said. Alexander Popov was one of the greatest. His fame preceded him.
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Popov, born 16 November 1971, is a Russian former swimmer. Widely considered the greatest sprint swimmer in history, he won gold in the 50-metre and 100 m freestyle at the 1992 Olympics and repeated the feat at the 1996 Olympics. He is the only male in Olympic games history to defend both titles. He held the world record in the 50 m for eight years and the 100 m for six. In 2003, aged 31, he won 50 m and 100 m gold at the 2003 World Championships.
Michael Gross
He dominated for a long time, with German seriousness. He has entered the history of swimming.
He is 201 centimetres tall and received the nickname "The Albatross" for his especially long arms that gave him a total span of 2.13 meters. He practically flew over the water.
Gross, competing for West Germany, won three Olympic gold medals, two in 1984 and one in 1988 in the freestyle and butterfly events, in addition to two World Championship titles in 1982, two in 1986 and one in 1991.
Federica Pellegrini
The greatest. She had to overcome the mourning for the loss of her historical coach Alberto Castagnetti, her mentor. Federica dominated the scene for many years, beating all the opponents of the different generations. In spite of a superficial fragility, she has a lion mental strength. In all the finals whoever wanted to win had to beat her, the queen. Noblesse oblige.
Federica Pellegrini is an Italian swimmer. A native of Mirano, in the province of Venice, she holds the women's 200 m freestyle world record (long course) and won a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. At the 2009 World Championships in Rome, she became the first woman ever to break the 4 minute barrier in the 400 m freestyle with a time of 3:59.15.
Federica is the only swimmer, male or female, to have won eight medals in a row in the same event (200 meters freestyle) at the World Championships.
She is also the first female Olympic champion in the history of Italian swimming and the only Italian swimmer to have set world records in more than one event.
Franziska Van Almsick
An East German woman educated to fatigue and dedication, Franziska van Almsick, born 5 April 1978 in East Berlin, won her first Olympic medals in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympic Games aged fourteen.
She has the distinction of having the most career Olympic medals, ten, without ever winning a gold medal. She ended her career at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004.
Laure Manadou
A champion who wrote memorable pages of her sport. She was the most glamorous, the most charming swimmer.
Laure Manaudou, born 9 October 1986, is a retired French Olympic, world and European champion swimmer.
She has held the world record in freestyle events between 200 and 1500 meter.
She is the daughter of a French father and a Dutch mother and she is the older sister of Florent Manaudou who is also an Olympic gold medalist swimmer.
Sara Sjorstrom
Pellegrini’s worthy opponent. She helds high the name of Sweden.
Sarah Fredrika Sjöström, born 17 August 1993, is a Swedish competitive swimmer specialized in the sprint freestyle and butterfly events. She is the current world record holder in the 50-meter freestyle (long course), the 100-meter freestyle (long course), the 200-meter freestyle (short course), the 50-meter butterfly (long course) and the 100-meter butterfly (long course and short course).
She is the first Swedish woman to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming. She won the Overall Swimming World Cup in 2017 and 2018 and she has won 10 individual World Championship gold medals.
Sjöström is the only female swimmer to win five individual medals at a single FINA World Aquatics Championships and, as of 2019, she has won a total of 16 individual medals at long course World Championships, more than any other female swimmer in history.
Only Michael Phelps has won more individual medals (20).
Swimming corrodes your soul. Almost all the leading athletes have had great crises and moments of discouragement. They were losing themselves. Respect for these champions who have locked their childhood, their most beautiful years, in a swimming pool. They all gave us a dream.
Videos
Ian Thorpe
Michael Phelps
Alexander Popov
Michael Gross
Federica Pellegrini
Laure Manadou
Comments
Authorize to comment