THORPEDO'S PAUNCH HITS THE NEWS

Sydney, Aug 11 NZPA - It's a national disaster for Australians. Their Superfish, the great Ian Thorpe, is getting fat. That is, at least, what the Sydney Morning Herald has told them. Their five-times Olympic swimming champion is munching on pizza and hamburgers and slurping cola in Los Angeles, the Herald reported as its lead story last Friday.

Under a headline of "The good life catches up with Thorpedo", the Herald showed a huge photo of the Thorpedo sipping on a suspected cola, while his black singlet covers a paunch.

Maybe, that was a diet iced tea he was sipping -- who knows? -- but whether the spare tyre around the belly deserved such treatment from a quality broadsheet certainly became a major talking point.

The report, which relegated downpage news that the Australian defence contribution to a stabilisation force in Lebanon could be thin because its forces were so stretched, said the influences of Hollywood Hills where Thorpe, 23, has moved were less than disciplined.

Thorpe went to Los Angeles last month for three-month refresher.

The report, under the byline of three journalists, quoted an unnamed swimmer at the University of Southern California saying he had seen Thorpe just three times at the pool. "Another swimmer said Thorpe had been at the pool the day before. When asked how he found him, the young man replied wryly, "big, fat and hairy'," the Herald reported.

"He quickly added, "No, he carries a lot of weight on him on purpose as part of his swim strategy'. In the past fortnight, the Herald has seen Thorpe train at the pool once, in the afternoon, in a relaxed sociable way."

The journalists asked whether this was the end of Thorpe's magnificent career.

Mum didn't think so. Margaret Thorpe told the ABC her son was in full training and preparing for next year's world championships in Melbourne and 2008 Beijing Olympics.

"I'm a little amazed by what's being said," she said.

"(Ian) has told me he is training and he is very happy over there and that's what I'm going to believe."

Also leaping to Thorpe's defence were the News Ltd newspapers, rivals of the Herald's publisher, Fairfax.

The Australian newspaper reported that the Herald's sister paper, the Sun-Herald, had used an almost identical photo to the paunchy one accompanying a report saying that Thorpe's physique was still impressive -- "perhaps more so than ever".

The Australian quoted Thorpe's American coach Dave Salo warning that constant media scrutiny could push Thorpe into an early retirement.

"I don't know why there is this obsession with his training. His championships are not for four months. It's August and they don't pick the team until December.

"The Australian people need to back off and let the guy what he wants to do or they will drive him out of the sport."

The Australian's stablemate, the tabloid Daily Telegraph, carried a photo of "a trim, muscular Thorpe" walking near his Hollywood home the week before.

"This is the photograph that shames the critics of one of Australia's greatest Olympians," chirruped the Telly.

Some of the Herald's readers were surprised at their choice of a front page lead story.

"Fair dinkum, I pay $A338 ($NZ414) for my annual Herald subscription, and I expect real news on page one, not celebrity gossip," wrote Andrew Burke.

"Thought I'd picked up the wrong paper this morning. Are the affairs of the nation so dull and unimportant compared with those of the celebrities?" asked Peter Davidson.

"What horror confronted me as I sat down to breakfast this morning with my favourite newspaper," wrote Diane Dennis. "Was it Howard's indifference to Lebanon's plight? Another humanitarian disaster?

"The tears flowed freely into my muesli as I read the heart-rending account of Thorpie's weight dilemma. Surely no other story could compete with this gem for gravitas."

Radio stations took plenty of calls, many of them sympathetic to Thorpe, saying he should be allowed to turn to sloth in peace, though others insisted he "owed it to us" to keep trim and create more swimming records for his country.

But there was plenty of talk too about the Herald, which backtracked a little in its next edition, running Mrs Thorpe's comments and those a friend pointing out that Thorpedo was on a low carbohydrate diet and ate hamburgers without the buns.

"He doesn't drink Coke, ever" said the unnamed friend. "He doesn't like it. It would have been Diet and he would have just eaten the meat from the burger."

That's a relief.