Poolside this week and the atmosphere is raucous and rivalrous. If you wanted a recipe for getting the Olympic Games off to a boisterous start, nothing could be better than the grudge match which the Americans and the Australians will conduct in the water.

You've heard the context-free highlights already.

"We'll smash them like guitars," says Gary Hall Jnr of America.

"I don't listen to drug cheats," says Kieran Perkins of Australia.

Somehow Olympic swimming has become a team sport complete with trash-talking, chest-beating and two-bob patriots. Which isn't to suggest that it isn't fun. The rivalry makes the swimming competition a little more than the sum of its parts. The Americans come with a little attitude and arrogance. If it rubs people the wrong way, well they like that.

It should make for a thunderous atmosphere in the 18,200-capacity aquatic centre. The banks of bleachers reach like sheer plains up towards the sky and they are filled with Australians who take American swim supremacy as a personal insult. The Australian obsession with making the Yanks eat their own speedos is understandable in a nation which prides itself on being amphibious. The Americans have collected 397 Olympic swimming medals since the Games began 104 years ago. The only time that Australia has beaten the Americans was in Melbourne in 1956. This could be the year for a repeat.

The Americans breeze in with big names like Jenny Thompson, Alison Terry, Brooke Bennett, Tom Dolan, Gary Hall and Lenny Krayzenburg, all good bets for individual medals. The Australians will cheer on Susie O'Neill, Ian Thorpe, Michael Klim, Kieran Perkins, Grant Hackett.

Fittingly, the bragging rights for the next four years should hinge on the relay competitions. In very few individual events do Americans and Australians go head-to-head each with an equal chance of success and in the women's events the Americans appear to have a clear advantage with Bennett and the precocious Megan Quann looking at possible gold medals. Veteran Susie O'Neill represents the best hope for the Australians. One man who is fed up with the nose-to-nose stance of the two teams is Australian head coach Don Talbot, who announced the other day that there was more to the Games than the swim war. Not much more. Emerging as respected contenders this year are the Dutch. The controversial rise of Inge de Bruijn could culminate in a gold in her strongest event, the 100 butterfly, while she will also challenge strongly for two freestyle medals. Her compatriot, Pieter van den Hoogenband, will press Thorpe hard in the 200 metres freestyle but should take silver to Thorpe's gold.

Alexander Popov is back for these Games. The Russian has been training on his own in Canberra for the past month, a familiar situation for him. Having followed his coach Gennadi Touretski to Australia from Russia in 1993, he has become resigned to losing his expertise for part of each year to the Australian national team. Popov, an authentic legend of the pool, is the 50 metres and 100 metres freestyle champion from the last two Olympics. Having had knee surgery last January this time around, Popov has been talking a different type of game. "This is the first Olympics I have come to hoping to enjoy," he says.

Little wonder. He is lucky to be here at all having been stabbed on the street in Moscow a month after the Atlanta Games. His commitment to savouring the moment this time round hasn't meant a deviation from the six-hour-a-day training regime, however, and he has been working in Canberra with friend and rival Michael Klim.

The women's competition may have its fiercest expression in a couple of races which don't involve prominent Australians. Swimming has taken quite a turn since Michelle Smith hurtled across the firmament four years ago. Available for perusals at present in various publications are a topless Jenny Thompson, a topless Therese Alshammer and Inge de Bruijn, in various poses which suggest that, regardless of drug accusations, she is still all woman.

Their freestyle rivalry this week will make for better viewing. Thompson, one of America's most revered swimmers, has never one an individual gold medal. She would have been favourite to achieve that here before de Bruijn exploded suddenly this spring. Yet a quite body of opinion exists which states that Alshammer, a 23year-old Swede, may steal between the two of them. Voted Sweden's sexiest woman two years ago for what its worth, Alshamer broke world short-course records in the 50 and 100 freestyle events in March at Athens to emerge as a significant contender here.