Firing the Thorpedo

摘要

It will all be over in eight minutes—give or take a few hun-dredths—spread over the first four nights of the Olympics. That's how long Ian Thorpe will spend swimming the finals of his four events—a nine-foot-long blur of arms, legs and foam, wrapped in his sinister full-length black bodysuit. And when it's all over, if Thorpe lives up to expectations, the gangly 17-year-old from a suburb of Sydney will have enough fame to last him the rest of his life—at least in Australia, a country where cab-drivers have favorite swimmers and know their times by heart.