SWIMMING: In a sport where personality is hidden behind goggles and below the water mark, Ian Thorpe did virtually the impossible.

He transcended his sport to became an icon rather than merely a swimming champion.

Not many swimmers have commanded €7 million contracts from sponsors. Not many have had their pictures plastered around the cities of every major championships in which they competed.

Some might be surprised Thorpe could walk away from the money and the adulation of being Australia's sporting superstar and an enigmatic global figure at the age of 24.

Others might be surprised that he could give up the chance of rewriting the record books at a third Olympics in Beijing.

But his retirement and the eloquent manner of it did not surprise those who keyed in to the intelligence and ambition of the man who dominated the last two Olympics in the pool.

As ever, Thorpe laced his farewell with a hint of mystery.

"I started to look at myself, not just as a swimmer but as a person," he said. "You can swim lap after lap, staring at a black line, and all of a sudden, you look up and see what's around.

"That's what it feels like to me. Ask more questions, ask what the relevance of swimming is in my life now.

"Swimming has provided a safety blanket for me, a security net. When I'm not certain about developing other sides of my life, I just fall back into swimming."

Thorpe has always professed the ambition to become a surgeon, and while he was not pinning detail on his retirement plans it is safe to say they do not include running a bar or a surfing school.

Politics, television, surgery, you suspect they are all within the compass of the man who is blessed with the sharpest of minds as well as a unique physique.

If man had been a fish then he would have looked something like Thorpe.

Size 17 feet, a huge reach, wide shoulders and slender fuselage. A freak, if the truth be told, but one which made him a world champion at 15 and saw him break 22 world records.

The medal haul is impressive. Three gold and two silver in Sydney 2000. Two gold, a silver and a bronze at Athens 2004. Eleven world titles.

Where does he stand in the pantheon of sporting greatness? Up there for sure. Not quite in the sphere of Mark Spitz, the Californian who won seven gold medals in four days at the Munich Olympics, all with world records, to go with two golds, a silver and bronze at Mexico in 1968.

Thorpe's greatest race? It has to be the 200m freestyle in Athens, the duel with American Michael Phelps.

All the talk was of Phelps, the young pretender out to dethrone the master.

But Thorpe had swept aside Phelps' by the final tumble, although he still turned second to Peter Van den Hoogenband, the Dutchman who had beaten him in Sydney.

Thorpe's dash for the line was most impressive. No panic, no detectable change in rhythm or stroke length, just a relentless clawing in of his Dutch nemesis, and when Thorpe finally touched the pads he did so in an Olympic record, one minute 44.71 seconds - half a second ahead of his rival.

Thorpe shot a black-suited arm to the evening sky and let out a primeval scream of "Yes".

The two hugged, and as Waltzing Matilda piped up Thorpe screamed in the Dutchman's ear: "Now we're even."

It turned out to be Thorpe's final glint of gold. In hindsight it wasn't a bad way to take a final bow, was it.