A nation at the water's edge

Australia's swimming stars salute their adoring support

Forget the 100m and the coxless fours. Australia will judge the success or failure of their Olympics by what happened in the pool.

BBC Sport's Jonathon Moore reports from Sydney.

They have dominated the media for months, even years. Indeed, should Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett or Susie O'Neil ever stand for the Australian parliament, no-one, and I mean no-one, would stand in their way.

The men's 4x100m and 4x200m relay victories over the US have been described as the greatest feats in Australian sporting history - a considerable accolade indeed considering the nation's recent sporting success.

Only Cathy Freeman comes anywhere near the Australian swimmers in terms of public profile. Even then, however, it is her ethnic background and not her chosen event that the country embraces.

Australia may be world champions in rugby union and cricket, but it is the swimming pool that truly catches their imagination. They are lured by the sea and the curve of the waves and although they romanticise the bush, they cling to the coast.

Thorpe with the world at his very large feet

Freeman was chosen to light the Olympic flame - but consider her surroundings as she did so. As one commentator noted after the opening ceremony: "I ask you what other country in its Olympic Games would have created a waterfall in the main stadium?"

Any student of Australian history will tell you that water has played a vital role in shaping the nation.

Indeed, the story of the country's past 100 years is a tale of how people occupied and claimed the beaches in a celebration of freedom and hedonism.

One ex-Prime Minister, Harold Holt, loved the ocean so much he even disappeared into it.

For Australians, the pool is a national entitlement and the ocean view a lifetime aspiration.

Stop someone in the street to ask them who they consider their true sporting icons, and the answers are invariably the same. Fraser, Murray Rose and John Konrads may not be names much remembered elsewhere around the world, but they will forever live on Down Under.

Had Kieren Perkins secured his third consecutive gold in the 1500m final - a particularly Australian cult in itself - he too would have secured immortality.

Poignant moment

Instead, however, the race proved to be the birth of yet another Aussie hero.

Australia has won seven golds, seven silvers and eight bronze medals in the 1500m - one of few events to have been included in every Olympics since 1896.

Hackett's victory, therefore, was a poignant moment for the nation. He defeated an undoubted great of the pool, but the manner in which he did so proved the Australian dominance in the event lives on.

For Australia's swimmers the Olympics is now over. For the past four years, they have represented their nation's hopes and dreams and mostly fulfilled them by grabbing a host of medals.

Whatever happens from here on in, for Australia at least, the Games have already been a success.