Oi! Wake up and advance, smell the chlorine, Australia fair. Normal service has resumed. The pond is golden again. The Games can go on. Old Big Feet is back.
Ian Thorpe, the Goliath of the pool-deck, got up yesterday a little wiser about slingshots, a little bruised in the pride area, and went to work again. The men's 4 x 200 metres relay brought him his third gold medal of the Games. His final tally is three gold and one silver. As such he gets full hero status but will have to re-apply for his national icon permit.
Each of Thorpe's golds has been accompanied by a world record. This time he set the pace by opening up a huge lead on the first leg as the Australians wiped almost two seconds off their own year-old world record. As further atonement to the Australian people the race saw the home team beat the Americans by 5 1/2 lengths.
The PA blared "I Come From a Land Down Under" and 17,500 people sang along dutifully, but disappointment was still in the air. Thorpe didn't come to the team press conference afterwards. A man with big feet was seen leaving the swimming compound later wearing sackcloth and ashes. He had a Ned Kelly bucket on his head and was flagellating himself.
Is it enough? Monday night's disaster was the second most watched TV event in Australian history. Not bad for something which lasted less than two minutes, but television doesn't normally show horror during prime time. Thorpe will look back on Monday of course and feel that he was a fool to have ever got out of bed. The Dutchman Pieter van den Hoogenbrand is swimming like a startled eel this week. He broke and then equalled the 200 metres freestyle record on his way to beating Thorpe on Monday. With Australia still absorbing the worst setback to its pride since Jason Donovan, the Dutch kid appeared again last night.
Swimming in a semi-final of the 100 metres freestyle, he broke that world record, too. Some context? It has taken six years for the 100 metre free record to inch down 3/100ths of a second. Van den Hoogenbrand sliced it from 48.18 to 47.84. And it was a semi-final. If van den Hoogenbrand had stuck a horse's head in the bed of each of his rivals for tonight he could not have shaken them more. For Australia there were other consolations. Susie O' Neill won gold in the 200 metres freestyle, becoming only the second Australian woman to win swimming golds at consecutive Games. Opinion was that she has never let the country down.
Tougher to digest was the sight of all-American boy Tom Malchow of Minnesota winning gold in the 200 metres butterfly. As long ago as 1984 Malchow's father promised his son that if he ever won an Olympic gold medal he would give him a Corvette. Pop Malchow promised last night to pay up. As some Australians stuck fingers down their throats and threw up.