As Ian Thorpe, five-times an Olympic swimming champion, gets back into serious training ahead of his projected comeback at London 2012, perhaps he will wonder occasionally whether it really is a good idea to try and return to the heights he abdicated five years ago, at the age of 24.

Heights that have since been commanded by the man who left Beijing with eight gold medals round his neck - figuratively speaking - Michael Phelps.

But if Thorpe - who announced this week that he has teamed up with the controversial Gennadi Touretski, the Russian-born coach to illustrious past Olympians such as Alexander Popov and Michael Klim – is assailed by any doubts as he bores through the water like the Thorpedo of old, he should comfort himself with the following thought: "At least I'm not a short track speed skater."

Obviously, from a physiological point of view, Thorpe could never involve himself in this winter sport as the blades needed to accommodate his size 17 feet would have the same lethal effect upon fellow competitors as those on Boadicea's chariot wheels once had against Roman opposition.

That said, the aquatic Aussie can turn this negative into a positive – which is after all what all elite athletes are supposed to do – and reflect upon the fact that, as he strives for Olympic glory, no rival is going to come careering into his lane to send him thrashing down into the depths.

All Thorpe has to worry about is swimming up and down and not hitting his head on the turns.


If only life were that simple for the likes of Jon Eley or Sarah Lindsay, two of Britain's more successful short track speed skaters whose competitive ambitions have been checked recently by factors on a different scale of awkwardness.

Lindsay had the bitter experience of being disqualified at last year's Vancouver Winter Games after a collision with Canada's Jessica Gregg soon after the start of her 500-metre heat.

"It always gets rough and there are always falls and crashes at the start," she lamented after what may have been the last appearance in an Olympic career that stretched back to 2002. "But nobody has right of way, until you're on the track and in your lane."

Eley was similarly disconsolate - although not to the point of tears - at the weekend's World Championships in Sheffield after crashing to the floor just two seconds into his 500m semi-final thanks to the flashing – and clashing - blades of the Chinese competitor starting to his right, Xianwei Liu.

Crashing, flashing, clashing – it's all go in today's modern short track. The young man from Solihull was left slowly circling the ice with hands clasped behind his back, looking like Prince Phillip on a particularly trying day.

Such reverses are not always received so passively.

Lindsay railed against the judges' decision in Vancouver.

And when the 1500m victory of South Korea's Kim Dong-Sung at the 2002 Salt Lake Games was annulled on the grounds that he had impeded the silver medallist, home skater Apolo Anton Ohno, there was an appeal that went, fruitlessly, to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, threats to boycott the closing ceremony, a national outcry back in Korea, and a number of threatening emails to Ohno that were investigated by the FBI.

But the overriding impression of short track speed skating is that it has a culture which accepts the possibility that any skater can train every hour that God sends for a big competition and be blitzed out of it in the blink of an eye for reasons which may or may not be down to them.

As the divinely named Apolo himself put it after being involved in a three-way crash in the Salt Lake 1500m final which allowed the last skater, Australia's Steven Bradbury, to coast across the line for Olympic gold: "That's short track."

(Just a thought – but if the banal minds who currently operate our national football stadium could have had anything to do with it - "Right, it's over, drown out all spontaneous celebration with a massively amplified version of that most hackneyed of winner's anthems, We Are The Champions" - then the music blaring from the PA that evening at the Salt Lake Ice Center would, without doubt, have been Elton John's "I'm Still Standing." Thank God that wasn't the case.)


The fatalism of Ohno's statement would have been embraced by the British short track speed skater who won double Olympic gold before it officially counted – Wilf O'Reilly (pictured).

Having won the 500 and 1000m events at the 1988 Calgary Games, when short track had demonstration sport status, O'Reilly's hopes of repeating his achievements once the sport was officially inside the Olympic tent, at the 1992 Albertville Games, came to grief through two heavy falls.

Two years later, during the Lillehammer Winter Games, his ambitions foundered once again because of a damaged blade on his skate in the 1000m, and - incredibly - in the 500m, where, to make matters worse, he was prevented from changing his blade before a re-run. If it had been racing, there would surely have been a stewards' enquiry.

O'Reilly certainly wasn't smiling, but he accepted his fate. "When shit happens, it happens," he said. I think what he meant was: "That's short track."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames