Thorpe to make trials return

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IAN Thorpe will return to competitive swimming at the Australian selection trials for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

Thorpe, 23, was among the swimmers listed today by Swimming Australia for the team selection trials in Melbourne from January 30 to February 4.

The trials will be held at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, the site for the Commonwealth Games aquatic events.

Thorpe, the reigning Olympic champion and world record holder in the 200m and 400m freestyle skipped the world championships in Montreal last month.

But his manager, Dave Flaskas, said Thorpe had been in training to regain fitness ahead of the trials, and had set his sights on winning gold in the 200m and 400m in Melbourne ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

“He’s been refreshing himself and having a bit of a break, but training really hard and just getting ready for the Commonwealth Games,” Flaskas said earlier this month.

Seventeen world and Olympic champions are entered for the trials.

Apart from Thorpe, Australia’s world and Olympic champions to compete at the trials are Grant Hackett, Jodie Henry, Leisel Jones, Libby Lenton, Danni Miatke, Jessicah Schipper, Jade Edmistone, Michael Klim, Brooke Hanson, Matt Welsh, Ashley Callus, Giaan Rooney, Sophie Edington, Alice Mills, Shayne Reese and Jim Piper.

“Our Australian Championships will be a great run up to the Games, and it will feature all our gold medallists from the recent FINA world championships in Montreal,” Swimming Australias chief executive Glenn Tasker said in a statement.

“It will also mark the return of Ian Thorpe to a major swim meet for the first time since last years Athens Olympics.

“In some events it will be just as tough to win an Australian Championship as it will be to win the Commonwealth Games.” “We expect the racing to be as competitive as ever; everyone wants to win a place on this team.

“To compete in front of your home crowd, especially in the sport of swimming, will be an honour that none of them will ever forget.

“This is the only chance our swimmers will have to make the Commonwealth Games team.

“It is going to be make or break for them.”

Swimmers battle for Commonwealth glory

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Given Australia’s dominance in the pool, it is likely the selection trials will be more competitive than the Commonwealth Games themselves says Swimming Australia CEO Glenn Tasker.

Tasker has announced the 2006 selection trials will be held at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, the site for the Commonwealth Games aquatic events, from January 30 to February 4.

It is expected 17 world and Olympic champions will be vying for Commonwealth Games selection including Grant Hackett, Jodie Henry, Libby Lenton, Leisel Jones and Jessicah Schipper.

The meet will also mark Australia’s greatest Olympian, Ian Thorpe’s, return to competitive swimming after a year’s break.

“In some events it will be just as tough to win an Australian Championship as it will be to win the Commonwealth Games,” said Tasker.

“We expect the racing to be as competitive as ever; everyone wants to win a place on this team.

“To compete in front of your home crowd, especially in the sport of swimming will be an honour that none of them will ever forget.

“This is the only chance our swimmers will have to make the Commonwealth Games team it is going to be make or break for them.”

You can crawl into Thorpie’s bed

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FANS can win the chance to share a Commonwealth Games bed with sports idols including Ian Thorpe and Jana Pittman — after a fashion.

The company that will provide 6100 beds to the Parkville athletes’ village has decided to auction those used by big-name competitors after the Games.

Grant Hackett, Tatiana Grigorieva, Michael Klim, Jodie Henry, Craig Mottram and Brooke Hanson are likely to be part of the action as well.

“We haven’t worked out exactly how the auction will work, but the proceeds will go to charity,” Sleepmaker’s Adam Creek said yesterday.

“The beds would have been used for only two weeks. We’re sure there are people out there who will be looking for a slightly different sort of memento.”

Other beds that will provide rest to less famous competitors will be sold second-hand.

To accommodate athletes like the 195cm Thorpedo, Sleepmaker must provide 1220 beds measuring 2.2m.

Sleepmaker is also providing mattress protectors, pillows and quilts for the village.

The bedding contract is believed to be worth more than $1.5 million.

The village at Parkville will be home to 5800 — 4500 athletes and 1300 officials.

Officials could not explain why an extra 300 beds had been ordered.

There are 155 detached houses, 32 studios, 25 townhouses and 103 apartments being built.

Permanent dwellings are being modified.

Grant’s big splash deal

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SUPERFISH Grant Hackett is at the centre of a Commonwealth Games row that is brewing between the Nine and Seven networks.

Channel 7 has said it plans to use world-beater Hackett as a special correspondent on its national news programs during the Melbourne Games.

But Nine has paid $56 million for the rights.

Having the potential superstar of the Games working for the opposition has Kerry Packer’s Nine lawyers examining the fine print of its TV rights deal.

In addition to ploughing though the pool, Hackett will mike-up for Seven news, Today Tonight and morning show Sunrise.

Amid an industry belief it paid too much, Nine is desperate to maximise its hold on athletes – and ratings – and squeeze Seven out.

While Nine has exclusive rights inside venues and the Games village, it has no special sway outside official Games zones.

Nine is planning on having each Australian team member sign a contract, which includes a clause banning the athlete from acting as a journalist.

Until last month, Hackett was a key member of Nine’s celebrity athlete team but Seven poached the 25-year-old for a six-figure deal in the weeks before his triple-gold performance at the Montreal world titles.

A Seven spokesman conceded the move would create bad blood between Seven and its major rival.

“One thing of which you can be sure – there will always be tension between Seven and Nine,” he said.

Let the games begin.

Thorpe and co in for Chinese water torture when sleeping giant wakes

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China is aiming for a revolution in the pool at the 2008 Olympics, writes Michael Cowley.

The greatest challengers to both Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett at the Beijing Olympics will not be from Michael Phelps and the Americans, but from athletes from the home nation.

That is the candid assessment of Thorpe’s manager David Flaskas who, with the champion swimmer, has seen first-hand how the Chinese are preparing for an assault on the swimming events in 2008.

“They are going to be a realistic threat to Ian and Grant in 2008,” Flaskas said. “I think every event is going to be fiercely competed by the Chinese. We’ve been hearing about their freestylers for two years now, they are gearing up, and I think everyone [will] be under siege.

“The sleepers are the Chinese men. I don’t think we’ll see them until Melbourne in 2007 [the world championships] and I think everyone is going to be under siege, not just Ian and Grant but also Michael Phelps.”

Flaskas noted that China had several swimmers who qualified for the 2004 Athens Games but the Chinese chose not to take them. He feels it’s about exposing them at the right time and “catching people a little off guard”, but expects Melbourne 2007 to be like a mini-Olympics.

He added that Australia had become a little obsessed with the Americans and the Europeans, but having seen China’s programs and the numbers they had to call upon, Australia should beware of the Chinese swimmers.

“I think we’ll see a team that is unbelievable. We’d be very naive to disregard what is coming out of China,” said Flaskas.

Flaskas’s sentiments have been echoed around the globe. Britain’s Australian-born coach Bill Sweetenham admitted earlier this year that he believed the Chinese had held back their senior program and hidden their youth program.

Sweetenham said the Chinese would not be showing their hand until 2008, but pointed out that the world youth rankings were dominated by China and Japan.

Australian head coach Alan Thompson said there was no doubt the Chinese men and women would be solid in 2008.

“Irrespective of anything else, the numbers they have say you are going to come up with some talented kids,” Thompson said.

“And they have got an ability to coach and an ability to swim. Even in the old days - whatever they were doing - they still had to be able to swim well to be able to do what they did. I think they are going to be a threat to us in the coming years. It’s not something we’re not thinking about. We’re looking at it.”

To support his argument, Flaskas pointed out that on a recent trip to China he saw a television interview with a member of the Chinese Olympic Committee during which the question was asked what the goals were for 2008.

“It was a chilling reminder to the rest of the world,” Flaskas said. “He said they have got to get stronger in other sports, and that’s why they have a program called ‘one one nine’, which is the 119 gold medals that are tied up in five sports that China don’t dominate, and they are swimming, athletics, cycling, kayaking, and rowing.

Because of their chequered past, suspicions will always be high of China if they have success, particularly if they prosper after a period in which they have not been dominating the sport.

China’s biggest drug scandal came in 1994. After their stunning success at the world titles that year in Rome, where their women won 12 of 16 events, a month later seven swimmers tested positive for the steroid dihydrotestosterone at the Asian Games in Hiroshima.

Then in 1998 China was hit with four more positive steroid tests and the discovery of human growth hormone in the luggage of swimmer Yuan Yuan as she came through Sydney airport en route to the world titles in Perth.

While they have had some positive tests from time to time since, there has not been the spate that occurred in the 1990s. Flaskas said he had no doubt the Chinese programs were drugs-free.

At this year’s world championships in Montreal, American men’s coach Dave Salo brought up the lack of Chinese success, noting they won one silver and four bronze medals.

Salo said it raised suspicions when the Chinese were “not trying to be the best they can be in the world arena”.

“It’s always going to raise suspicions if we go into Beijing and they haven’t done anything in three years and names you never heard of are showing up in finals,” Salo said.

“Maybe they’re waiting for 2008 so they can step up and surprise us. We know they have the athletes. Maybe it’s more important to them to do well in their Chinese Games.”

The Chinese Games will be held in Nanjing in October and, according to Olympic gold medal-winning women’s breaststroker Luo Xuejuan, several Chinese swimmers have focused on those titles rather than the world championships.

“They needed to choose this championship or the national games,” Luo told AP in Montreal.

TV war over athletes

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SWIMMING superstar Grant Hackett is at the centre of a Commonwealth Games row brewing between the Nine and Seven networks.

Channel Seven has told the Herald Sun it plans to use world-beater Hackett as a special correspondent on its national news programs during the Melbourne Games.

In addition to ploughing though the pool, Hackett would mike up for Seven News, Today Tonight and Sunrise.

Kerry Packer’s Nine has paid $56 million for the Australian rights to the Games and yesterday was examining the fine print of its deal. Amid an industry belief it paid too much, Nine is desperate to maximise its hold on athletes — and ratings — and squeeze Seven out.

While Nine has exclusive rights inside venues and the Games village, it has no special sway outside official Games zones.

But Nine could enlist Australian Commonwealth Games team management to help protect its investment.

Each Australian team member must sign a contract, which includes a clause banning the athlete from acting as a journalist.

Just what constitutes a journalistic report as opposed to an appearance could become a question for lawyers.

Adding insult to potential injury, until last month Hackett was a key member of Nine’s celebrity athlete team.

Seven poached the 25-year-old in the weeks before his stunning triple-gold performance at the world titles in Montreal.

He signed with Seven for a six-figure annual fee.

Seven spokesman Simon Francis said Hackett started with the network on August 1 and was learning the ropes in the Brisbane newsroom.

“We reckon Grant’s one of the great talents that can migrate from sport to television,” he said.

“He’s keen to pursue a career in television . . . we’re looking at migrating him to network programming.”

Of plans for the Games, Mr Francis said: “He’ll be reporting for Seven News and Today Tonight and Sunrise.”

He conceded the move would create bad blood between Seven and its major rival. “One thing of which you can be sure — there will always be tension between Seven and Nine,” he said.

Channel Nine did not respond to a request for comment.

Hackett’s rival as leader of the Australian swim pack, Ian Thorpe, is tied to Foxtel.

Thorpe was due to discuss plans for the Commonwealth Games with Foxtel management today.

He is developing a lifestyle program for the pay-TV network. The show is due to be launched early next year as hype builds to the March Commonwealth Games.

Nine’s stable of athletes for the Games includes swimmers Jodie Henry and Brooke Hanson, hurdler Jana Pittman, diver Chantelle Newbery and cyclist Ryan Bayley.

Foxtel is negotiating with Nine to be appointed secondary Games broadcaster.

Zimmer preparing for trials

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TAYLIAH Zimmer says she has become a different swimmer since experiencing her first World Swimming Championships in Montreal earlier this month.

The former Koroit backstroke star and national 200m champion returned home to the south-west this week after winning the backstroke hat-trick at the Australian Shortcourse Championships in Melbourne which ended late last week.

The three wins in the 50m, 100m and 200m, all just milliseconds outside national record times, secured her a position on the Australian shortcourse team for the world titles next year.

But it’s her experiences in Montreal that she hopes to use as a stepping stone towards international recognition.

Zimmer finished 14th in the 200m backstroke in Canada, but she admitted that semi-final nerves had taken their toll.

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Zimmer swam more than a second outside her best in the semi.

“I was on track for a 2.11 in the lead-in to the world championships,” she said. “I’d gone through the heat all right, I’d qualified for the semi in seventh position.

“The nerves just got a hold of me in the semi-final, I swam a shocker. These are the things you learn from though.

“Petria Thomas was fantastic with me afterwards, she just said to me not to worry about it, it happens to everyone at their first worlds.”

Zimmer said she has now had a glimpse of world-standard competition and liked what she had seen.

“Something’s changed in me,” she said. “I feel as though I’ve come back a completely different swimmer.

“There were 14 rookies on the team and we’ve all become very close, it feels as though there is a new wave of swimmers coming through. The girls won something like 10 of the 13 gold medals. The girls have arrived, we’re just waiting on the new wave of boys to come through now.'’

Zimmer said the opportunity to meet, learn from and spend time with Australian swimming legend and multiple Olympic and world titles gold medallist Grant Hackett was an experience she would never forget.

The former Koroit swimmer said she would take the next three weeks off before preparing for the Australian championships next January, which will also be selection trials for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne next March.

“I’ve still got to do plenty of the fitness work, but I’ve got three weeks away from the pool now,” Zimmer said.

“It’s going to be a big campaign from here on towards the Commonwealth Games. My goal for the Commonwealth Games is to definitely get a medal.”

Zimmer said she had been rapt with her form at the national shortcourse titles despite not feeling at her peak.

“I felt as though everything was wrong with me,” she said.

“I had a neck problem, then a back, then my hips. We only had one day to recover from jet lag and it was straight back into it. There were people trying to break world records at the shortcourse championships, it was full on from the start.'’

Zimmer missed the Australian record for the 50m by just .06 of a second and her own national record in the 200m by only .04.

She said she was encouraged by the performances of fellow south-west swimmers Chelsea Maddock and Georgia Johnstone who also competed at the national event.

Mottram saves the worlds

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There were plenty of reasons why the World Athletics Championships slipped under the radar over the last two weeks. Lost among a myriad of higher-profile sports, the world’s best track and field athletes competed largely unnoticed by the sporting public in this country, who have been swept away by golden performances in the pool in Montreal and an Ashes series of unrivalled tension. Not to mention the Bledisloe Cup and the business end of the footy season in both major codes.

The timeslot wasn’t overly-friendly either. As if the athletics fanatics of this country needed to know that their sport is struggling for a profile, SBS, the champion of under-appreciated sports, pushed their timeslot back to 2:30am, and often later, to accommodate the goliath that is Australian cricket.

Even the most passionate of sports fans would have struggled to sit through 90 overs of absorbing Ashes action and then keep the eyes open for the best of the athletics from Helsinki. The Scandinavian weather wasn’t much help, with storms plaguing much of the night sessions and keeping the faithful up even later into the morning.

The action extended past the newspaper deadline here in Australia and meant that most of the news was well-dated by the time it made it into print or on TV the next day. When it did make the news, the impression was of a disappointing Australian effort.

Australian Athletics is always rated as the poorer cousin to other sports, in particular swimming. In a golden era, Australia performed as well on the track as it did in the pool, but that era has well gone. The reality is now, saying Australia had a disappointing world Aths campaign is probably equivalent to saying Ethiopia had a poor swim champs.

The world of athletics has changed dramatically in the professional era, with the US College circuit providing a never-ending breeding ground for the sprinters and field athletes an endless flow of long distance runners coming out of East and Northern Africa. The recent move by gulf states to poach African runners to ‘buy’ golden moments is at the more insidious end of the spectrum, but it is a sign of how poorly the world’s best athletes are rewarded financially if they are willing to give up the honour of representing the country of their birth for money.

Australia’s athletes aren’t rewarded with the lucrative endorsement contracts of other elite sportspeople. They participate more for love than money, and while Australia boasts world class training and medical facilities, the depth of talent isn’t there to deliver constant results. Still, Craig Mottram won bronze in Helsinki and Patrick Johnson and John Steffenson made the finals of the 200m and 400m respectively. All fine efforts.

Occasionally, someone stands up and delivers, a Cathy Freeman or Jana Pittman. From the solitude of year-round training sessions, they are catapulted into the national spotlight, in particular around Olympic time. Freeman handled that superbly, Pittman not so well. That is a challenge which much confronts Mottram, Australia’s only medallist in Helsinki, at next year’s Commonwealth Games and possibly the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Mottram’s effort to finish third in the 5000m was perhaps the biggest achievement of any Australian sportsperson in the last month, but it has been recorded as a positive blot on an otherwise disappointing world championships. While Jessicah Schipper, Leisel Jones and Grant Hackett were excellent in Montreal and McGrath and Warne were great in England, Mottram was inspirational in Helsinki.

Pulling himself off the canvas with 50m to go, he overhauled the reigning world champion to snatch bronze and finish within three metres of the gold medal. The time wasn’t flash, but the race was run to suit the African runners, who can sprint quickly at the end of their races. Mottram took them on at their own game, and came away with a medal which he treasured as much as any gold. He, as much as Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne, Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath did at Old Trafford, embodies the Australian will to succeed, but for the mean time, he’ll have to wait for his back page.

You reckon he can hack it?

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SEVEN have got a workload and a half worked out for their newest recruit, swim star Grant Hackett.

The network unveiled Hackett at a low-key launch on Friday.

He’ll be doing bits for sport, bits for Today Tonight, bits for Sunrise, bits for The Great Outdoors and anything else they can dream up to get his head on screen.

The schedule will make him think his 400, 800 and 1500 metre freestyle wins at the World Champs were a piece of cake.

But he’s got this media thing down pretty well. At the launch he was asked if he’d ever had a question he wasn’t able to answer.

“I’ve been able to crap on about something each time, no matter what the question was,” he said.

Davies ready for the hard yards

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World Championship and Olympic bronze medallist David Davies has vowed to improve before the Commonwealth Games.

The 20-year-old from Barry was beaten into 1500m freestyle third at the major championships by Australian great Grant Hackett and American Larsen Jensen.

But the man popularly christened ‘Dai Splash’ by his Welsh fans has a plan in place ahead of Melbourne 2006.

“I’ll recuperate now, but then it’s an intense training routine. I can develop strength, speed and power,” he said.

“I’ll be putting in 50-55 miles a week, training intensely for 27 hours, to get me into the right shape.

“It’s a hard slog, especially on the dark winter mornings, but if I don’t do it I know I’ll miss out.”

The City of Cardiff man was pleased with his performance in the World Championships in Montreal last month to prove that his Olympic medal was no fluke.

“It’s always harder to do something again and I was delighted to re-establish myself,” Davies told BBC Sport Wales.

“The final went well and I swam as my coach asked, but unfortunately I couldn’t quite get the silver.

“Now the aim is to get the preparation right for Melbourne and move on.”

He acknowledges that his intense rivalry with Jensen and Hackett will fuel him through the long months of training.

“It’s a hectic battle that keeps everyone on their toes,” said the Welshman.

“We’re helping each other to improve, but hopefully next time I can get the better end of it.”

If Jensen is firmly in his sights, Davies acknowledges that at the moment Hackett - undefeated in the event for eight years - is a class apart.

“Hackett is a world-class athlete who I have a lot of respect for,” enthused Davies. “It’s a big ask to challenge him.

“He was five seconds ahead of me in Montreal, but that’s not bad in a 15-minute race.

“It can be made up and I’ll chip away at him, but the trouble is he’ll be trying to improve as well.”

If targeting Hackett is one of the hardest jobs in sport, Davies has a dream in mind to keep himself motivated.

“Getting a gold medal swimming for Wales and beating Hackett in front of his home Australian crowd - that would be the ultimate for me,” mused the youngster.

He may just have the talent and commitment to make his dream a reality.