400 metres Freestyle, Men

At the start of the Sydney Olympics Ian Thorpe was world champion and being built up as one the genuine stars of the Games He lived up to the fierce expectations of his country by producing an imperious performance to win Australia’s first gold of the 2000 summer Olympics in front of a huge TV audience in the host nation. By the 50 metre mark of the final he was nearly a second ahead of the rest and the time gap continued to increase for the rest of the race. With the crowd encouraging him with shouts of “Thorpie, Thorpie” he finished in a time of 3:40.59 which was a second under the world record time of fellow Australian Kieren Perkins.

Australia also had a sort of a claim on silver medalist Massimiliano Rosolino of Italy. Rosolino had learnt to swim whilst living in Australia as a young boy. After the Games the Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera” alleged that he was one of five Italian Olympic champions who had been found with abnormal levels of human growth hormone (HGH) during pre-Games testing in Italy. No official charges were ever brought against him.