Thorpe in new world challenge

Ian Thorpe, still only 18 years old but long one of swimming's finest champions, will bring his phenomenal talents full circle at the world championships in Japan over the next two weeks.

Thorpe was a Sydney schoolboy aged 15 years, three months and two days when he charged past fellow Australian teenager Grant Hackett to win the 400 metres freestyle title in Perth in January 1998 to become the youngest-ever men's individual world swimming champion.

He had already made his international mark the previous August in Fukuoka when he took the 400 freestyle silver medal behind Hackett at the Pan Pacific championships, having become the youngest male to swim for Australia.

Now the "Thorpedo" returns to Fukuoka, this time the stage of the world championships, as an Olympic gold medallist, defending world champion and holder of a slew of world records.

The championships begin on Monday with the women's five kilometres open-water race, followed three hours later by the men's five kilometres.

Water polo and synchronised swimming will get under way during the week before Thorpe and his fellow pool swimmers enter the fray next Sunday, the day which also marks the start of the diving.

Thorpe embellished his record this year by becoming the first Australian since John Konrads in 1959 to win the 100, 200, 400 and 800 metres freestyle titles at the national championships, which doubled as trials for Fukuoka.

WORLD RECORDS

He broke the 200 and 800 metres world records in the process, taking his individual tally to nine long-course and four short-course world marks.

Thorpe, who will also loom large in three relay events, says he has some way to go to match the likes of Russia's multiple Olympic gold medallist Alexander Popov in the freestyle sprints.

"For the time being I'm a long way behind Popov, a long way," he said when he went to France to compete in June.

He also faces great battles with Pieter van den Hoogenband, the Dutchman who snatched the Olympic 200 freestyle gold and the world record from the Australian in Sydney last September and dethroned the great Popov in the 100 freestyle.

Thorpe has since lopped more than half a second from Van den Hoogenband's 200 world mark but the Dutchman is ready to take up the challenge and has also threatened to move up to 400 metres to take on the Australian in the event Thorpe has monopolised for the last three years.

Time and again Thorpe has blasted rivals aside with the awesome kick of his size-17 feet but Van den Hoogenband is unfazed. "He never intimidates me," he said.

Popov, who suffered his first major championship defeat in more than six years when American Bill Pilczuk took his 50 metres freestyle world title in Perth, aims for an unmatched third successive 100 freestyle world crown just four months before his 30th birthday.

KLIM INJURY

Michael Klim, Popov's training partner in Canberra and the biggest medal winner at the 1998 worlds, has been undergoing acupuncture treatment at the Australian preparatory camp in Singapore to help heal an ankle injury he sustained earlier this month playing basketball during his warm-up routine.

Klim won four golds in 1998 -- 200 freestyle, 100 butterfly and two relays -- plus two silvers and a bronze.

He and fellow Australian Geoff Huegill are set to vie for supremacy in the 50 and 100 metres butterfly with Lars Frolander, the Swede who beat both of them for gold in the Olympic 100 butterfly final.

The United States, who proved once again at the Olympics that they can always rise to the big occasion, will be without an array of 1998 world champions.

They include Jenny Thompson and Amy Van Dyken, both now retired, Lenny Krayzelburg, who has chosen to compete at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, Tom Dolan, who is talking about a comeback at the 2004 Olympics, and Brooke Bennett, who missed the U.S. trials because of illness.

But they will be well served by the likes of Michael Phelps, who at 15 became the youngest American male ever to set a world record when he cracked the 200 metres butterfly mark in March, and the man whose record he broke, Olympic champion Tom Malchow.

Fellow American Ed Moses, bearer of an illustrious sporting name, could feature in one of the great duels of the meeting.

His newly-minted 100 metres breaststroke world record was broken twice last month by Russia's Roman Sludnov, who became the first swimmer to go under one minute in the event.

China will seek to redeem themselves after the drug scandals of the last world championships when 13 vials of human growth hormone were found in the luggage of swimmer Yuan Yuan and then four of her team mates tested positive for a banned diuretic.

The Chinese won three events at those championships but came away from the Sydney Olympics empty-handed. This time they lead the world rankings in four events -- Luo Xuejuan (women's 50 and 100 metres breaststroke) and Qi Hui (women's 200 breaststroke and 200 individual medley).