Hackett focused on the future not the flag

Hackett focused on the future not the flag

HOW nonsensical the recent media swipe at Grant Hackett for announcing he didn't intend to march in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, even if offered the honour of carrying the Australian flag. How uninformed the criticism of him for wearing a mask to protect against infection.

Carrying the flag at the opening ceremony has always been a reward for past achievements, but it's what lies ahead that is Hackett's sole focus.

Less than 24 hours after the Beijing Games get underway in a cannonade of fireworks on August 8, Hackett's third Olympic campaign will begin with the heats of the 400m freestyle. It's an event in which he still leads the world but not by the sort of margin that would allow him to troop around for hours the night before, with or without the Australian flag.

Eight days later, he has the other bookend of the swim program, the event that will eclipse the Melbourne Cup as "the race that stops the nation", as Hackett attempts to become the first male swimmer in history to win the same event - in his case the 1500m freestyle - at three successive Olympics (if Pieter van den Hoogenband hasn't already achieved the feat in the men's 100m freestyle).
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As for the mask, who can blame Hackett for erring on the side of caution. At the Sydney Games he was almost derailed by the Epstein-Barr virus, which cost him near-certain medals in the 200m and 400m freestyle, while a partially collapsed lung robbed him of 25 per cent of his normal oxygen intake during the 1500m final at his second Games in Athens. And a recent study by AIS scientists has showed 48 per cent of swimmers fall ill during taper.

Mask? It's a wonder he hasn't become the Man in the Bubble.

It is because Hackett pushes himself so hard that his career has been dogged by illness. That has been the case right from his international debut at the 1997 Pan Pacs in Fukuoka, where he was so feverish with a virus that he had to be helped from the pool by then Australian team manager and now head coach Alan Thompson after courageously defeating American contender Tyler Painter in the 1500m.

On form going into Japan, he should have blown Painter away but he was so weakened by the virus that the American almost drew level late in the race before Hackett pulled away. These tactics were revisited in Athens when another US rival, Larsen Jensen, and Welshman David Davies closed on him at the 1400m mark before he again delved deep to fight them off.

Indeed, so unsparing is Hackett on his own body that his coach, Ian Pope, has come to realise his champion swimmer has to be protected from himself.

"The thing with Grant is that he will keep driving himself and sometimes you've just got to say 'stop'," Pope said.

"You can train hard but your body needs time to recover. And he's come to realise that's how he's remained healthy, that you don't have to drive yourself into a hole and then get sick. You drive yourself to the edge but you don't go over the edge. It's a fine balance, a fine line.

"He's amazing. He deserves everything he gets because the number of times you set a standard and then he goes and breaks it at training because he's just so driven. He'll challenge himself even more. The great thing about Grant is that he's always thinking 'next time'."

While Hackett has said this will be his last Games, talk of an actual retirement date is another distraction Pope knows his blinkered champion can do without.

Yet Hackett already has won more world championship medals than any other swimmer in history and it would be fair to ask what more he could possibly achieve in the sport if he completes the Olympic three-peat in Beijing.

Still, three successive golds in any event, let alone the most gruelling race on the program, is tough. Alexander Popov and Kieren Perkins, arguably the greatest spinter and distance swimmer ever to grace the pool, both fell agonisingly short, winning gold at their first two attempts only to be relegated to silver as they strove to carve their names in the Olympic pantheon.

But then Hackett has spent virtually his whole life going one better than Perkins - and not just when he denied his hero and arch-rival the 1500m gold in Sydney.

Pope learned only recently what originally had stoked Hackett's fires when he asked the 28-year-old to talk to some of his younger swimmers about his early goals and aspirations.

"He said his goal as he was growing up was to beat Kieren's records," said Pope, who inherited Hackett from his original coach, Denis Cotterell, in 2006. "He used Kieren as a benchmark. Each year he'd say 'so that's where Kieren was at 15 or 16 and that's where I have to be at and then a little bit better'."

After effectively circumnavigating the globe in terms of training kilometres logged, Hackett is still striving for improvement in his relentless pursuit of perfection. He uses video aids but Pope has tweaked the technology, rigging up a time delay to a poolside monitor so that Hackett can swim into the wall, then raise his head to check out his technique on the screen in front of him.

"This is the way Grant learns fastest, through visual images," Pope said. "I can say something about his technique day after day and he still falls back into old habits but when he sees himself he says 'Geez, is that what I'm doing?'."

Merely qualifying for the 1500m final in Beijing is likely to take a 14min50sec swim. To win his third gold he may have to go 10sec faster. If Jensen or Davies or Peter Vanderkaay or Park Tae Hwan or Mateusz Sawrymowicz unleash something extraordinary, Hackett might have to break his 14:34.56 world record.

Four years ago Hackett vowed to his mother, Margaret, that he would win the 1500m gold or put himself into the hospital trying. In the end he almost did both. Certainly he was so wobbly after the race that he almost toppled back into the pool when he climbed onto the blocks to celebrate.

So Hackett will conserve his energy come the opening ceremony. It's the closing ceremony he's targeting anyway, when chef de mission John Coates honours as flagbearer the athlete who has done Australia proudest.