Wednesday, November 22, 2006

So long and thanks for all the (Super) fish

And so it ends. The illustrious career of Ian Thorpe has ended with a whimper rather than a bang. He announced his retirement from swimming yesterday and promptly said he was going surfing. Not a bad secondary career I say.

I must admit, it would be good to have the luxury of retirement at 24 years of age. Though you would have to have an awful lot of superannuation to do so. Retirement at that age means around 60 odd years of free time. That’s an awful lot of mornings spent in Star Bucks reading the paper.

Still, I don’t think Thorpe will have many problems filling the hours. He has his business interests, his fashion, he could always do the commentary thing (though he could be from the Cathy Freeman school of commentary) Sometimes the best athletes do not make the best commentators as our Golden Girl has shown. I’ve heard that Holly wood may be calling, but after his short lived performance on "Thorpies Angels" I would suggest that he give that one a miss.

The other question is if Thorpe is just going through the curiously title "Quarter Life crisis". Not quite sure of his place in the world and a little burnt out by the training, so he makes a snap decision to pack it in because he can. Most of the people who experience this decide to jet off to Europe for a couple of years. They have a few torrid love affairs, run out of money then end up back in Australia an older and wiser person, ready for a life of career treadmill-ness and an de facto lifestyle with a partner found at a desperate and dateless ball (or so I am told).
So maybe that’s it. Thorpe just needs a bit of loving…. He doesn’t appear to have been bothering the scorer much (according to those reliable scoops in the women’s mags). So here is my advice to the Super Fish :-

Get away from it all, get laid repeatedly, and then think about it again. You are a long time retired.

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