Ian Thorpe's decision to hang up his goggles eight years after becoming the youngest male world swimming champion at 15 back in 1998 marks a bittersweet ending to the career of a swimmer who rose from a working-class beginnings in a Sydney suburb to become one of the world's most recognisable sportsmen with an income to match.

Thorpe will go down as a legend, a hero and one of the all-time greats but Australian talk of him being the all-time greatest freestyler and suggestions from the likes of Bob Bowman, coach to Michael Phelps, that Thorpe is the greatest middle-distance freestylere ever, turn a blind eye to swimming history and smack of living in our own time: the achievements on freestyle alone of Americans Mark Spitz (26 individual world records, 11 Olympic medals, seven of them gold) and Don Schollander (12 individual world records over 200 and 400m freestyle, no chance to swim a 200m free in 1964 because it was not on the Olympic programme and the holder of the 200m freestyle world record for the longest time in history) can be said to exceed or equal those of Thorpe, for example.

Then there's Michael Gross (first to retain the world title over 200m freestyle), Matt Biondi and Alex Popov, 1500m man Vladimir Salnikov, who held the world record over 400m six times, one more than Thorpe, and Murray Rose, who retained the 400m Olympic crown. And what of John Konrads, coached by Don Talbot to 12 world records from 200 to 1,500m freestyle. Thorpe does well to join that pantheon of greats and has no need to be promoted beyond it.

While sporting immortality is assured for Thorpe the "greatest" tag so loved by all but those who might aspire to or achieve it would have required him not only to go to Beijing 2008 but once there to win the 400m freestyle and become the first male swimmer to take three Olympic successive titles. It was not to be.

Thorpe is a complex man, a sensative soul, a swimmer who was once approachable to those in the media, particulary the Australian media, with whom he had grown up in the sport. The arrival of agents and management companies put paid to what could have been an easier relationship and at times it seemed (even if the swimmer did not intend it) as though Thorpe was either hiding or being hidden.

That was a shame: when Thorpe did engage with the sports media he was an absolute delight, an ambassador for his sport, for himself and for family and those around him who helped to make him the man he is. An intelligent boy from an early age (I recall interviewing a 30-year-old when he was 15 and wise beyond his years), Thorpe was bright, likeable, engaging and conducted himself impeccably. He was not one for living his life through the wishes and ambitions of others and in that sense, his decision today comes as no surprise.

He arrived at it through talking to a counsellor for these past three weeks, a counsellor and friend of Shane Gould's. Those talks have had a hugely positive influence on Thorpe.

That said, listening to others has not always done Thorpe a favour. On occasion, he (or those around him) fell into the trap of making himself unavailable to swimming and sports media while being seen to be keen to play a role on the celebrity circuit and all that goes with it.

The "crap I have to put up with", as he put it, stemmed not from the swimming world he sometimes turned away from but from the celebrity tour and those more interested in his underwear than his underachievement in the pool of late.

Thorpe is said to have never been comfortable with the trappings of fame and fortune yet he embraced some of them wholeheartedly. There are a few examples of truly famous people managing to avoid the glare of a world drunk on celebrity: the singer-song-writer, Kate Bush, for example, refuses all offers of chat-show appearances, shuns the celebrity tour, self-promotional ambition and the party culture that accompanies it. As such, she has been left alone, her work left to do the talking.

Until these past two years, the same could have been said of Thorpe. After that first world title in Perth 1998, Thorpe spent the next six years demolishing world records and stockpiling more Olympic medals than any other Australian in sporting history - eight in all, five of them gold.

Propelled by size-17 feet and pulled along by shovel-like hands, Thorpe, in his trademark all-body adidas black suit, rode the wave like an orca, the bow before him seemingly a symbiotic creature that was enjoying the ride. His technique, developed under the guidance of Doug Frost, was as near to perfect as you could get for a middle-distance to distance freestyler. It also helped him at the back end of sprints when the speedsters of the pool had started to seize on the spot.

At one time, Thorpe looked invincible: even on the few occasions that anyone got close over 400m - teammate Grant Hackett in Athens - it seemed that the Gods of water were on his side to give him a heaven-sent advantage.

His success led to speculation about his ascendancy to "greatest of all-time", if there could ever be such a thing in a multi-discilpine sport. After he won six world titles in Fukuoka 2001, Thorpe faced comparisons with Spitz's record haul of seven Olympic gold titles at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

He tried to expand his repertoire and proved himself versatile, with victory over 200m medley at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Matt Welsh stopped him winning seven golds in Manchester by keeping the pretender at bay over 100m backstroke. The world record he established over 400m in Manchester was to be his last, and his last with Frost, who instilled a discipline (like counting the number of steps he would have to walk up and down at the English venue and pacing those out before and after sessions in training for several months before the Games) that stood him in excellent stead.

He moved away from that tight ship soon after Manchester waved goodbye to the Commonwealth. In hindsight, Thorpe has talked about September 11, 2001 being a defining moment when he decided that there was more to life than the pursuit of greatness: he would have ascended the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center at the wrong moment on a trip to the Big Apple but turned back because his agent's wife had forgotten her camera.

After the 2002 Commonwealth Games, where Frost spoke about a possible seven events that Thorpe could go for in Athens 2004, the swimmer announced that he was splitting from the coach who had guided him from boyhood in favour of a change of pace with Frost's assistant Tracey Menzies.

A former high school art teacher, Menzies encouraged Thorpe to explore life outside the pool. Thorpe went globetrotting, mixing with the rich and famous, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Giorgio Armani and indulging in his passion for fashion.

Guess what? His performances in the pool began to suffer. His last world record was established during his time with Frost, though Menzies can be credited with doing a fine job in making sure that Thorpe was in the right shape to achieve the very great performances that he pulled out of the hat in Athens.

He got to the blocks of the 400m freestyle by default: at trials in Australia he falsestarted and all seemed lost. No defence of his signature title. Sydney teammate Craig Stevens made way for him by withdrawing from the 400m to concentrate on a 1,500m in which he was also a bit-player when rated against the likes of Hackett.

Thorpe took the 400m crown in Athens a touch ahead of Hackett and then crowned his career with a magnificent 200m effort: not only did he take revenge on Pieter Van den Hoogenband, the Dutchman who had beaten him in Sydney 2000 and won the 100m for the first time in the bargain, but he sent a clear message to the young American vying for a Spitzean seven - Michael Phelps: stay off my patch. The 200m, whiule thrilling, was billed, somewhat prematurely, "the race of the century".

Thorpe topped Athens off with a bronze in the 100m freestyle, an amazing feat for a swimmer capable of a 3:40 400m freestyle. He rates his best Olympic performance as his victory over Hackett in the 400m in Athens, coming as it did in the face of a difficult preparation.

But it is his favourite Olympic moment that is likely to go down as the crowning glory of a career laden with highs: on the opening night of the 2000 Olympic Games at home in Sydney and after breaking the 400m freestyle world record to claim his first gold medal, Thorpe, then 17, entered the water last for the Dolphins in the 4x100m freestyle alongside Gary Hall Jnr, an American sprinter more than a second faster on paper and who had claimed on the eve of racing that the US quartet would "smash the Aussies like guitars".

Thorpe believed otherwise. In a gladiatorial atmosphere, more than 17,000 people on their feet, he snatched victory at the last stroke and ended a great US tradition: America had never lost the event since its introduction in 1964. The Dolphins celebrated with a show of deckside air guitar. It was an electric moment, one charged with the particles of sporting legend.

From that point on, Thorpe was a household name. With his size-17 feet and his ability to stand unshaking at 17 in full glare of the world and its wife, he had achieved what Spitz and his moustache, what Gross and his wingspan, what Fraser and her defiant brilliance, what Weissmuller and his loin cloth had done before him: held the gaze of a public beyond the pool, put swimming on the international sporting agenda.

The year-long break that followed Athens was decisive, and many predicted that he would never return to top-flight racing. So it proved. Injury and illness and a move away from Australian shores this past year indicated that Thorpe was on his way out. The physical problems he complained off were consequences of the deeper ailment: his swimming heart and head had deserted him. Where there's no will, there's no way. The body may have gone on for some time yet but the divine sporting spark, the ignition fuel that all great champions need, was no longer within him.

This past summer, he has argued against such suggestions but his decision today came as confirmation that he had known for some time that he needed to move on in life. His legacy lives on in worthies such as Phelps and Bowman, the coach who saw the model and taught his charge to aspire to it.

The Thorpedo is dead. Long live Ian Thorpe, former swimmer with a fine life of possibilities ahead of him.