Ian Thorpe

For myself, losing is not coming second. It's getting out of the water knowing you could have done better. For myself, I have won every race I've been in.

I thought I could, and thought I would, swim a lot quicker - much quicker.

Compared to how I have raced before and how I have competed, the success that I have had, this does look like doom compared to it.

A lot of people would think I have led this easy kind of charmed life, or maybe even a fairytale in some ways. But it has been anything but that.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

I'm really anti-option, so computers have been my nightmare with recording. I don't want endless tracks; I want less tracks. I want decisions to be made.