Pieter van den Hoogenband

WHEN champions stalk an arena, lesser mortals hunt for cover.

When a Tiger Woods strides out onto the golf course, thus, the rest reconcile themselves to playing for second place. When a Michael Johnson takes his mark, the runners in other lanes try to breathe shallow, so as not to swallow his dust.

True champions have that effect -- of numbing your limbs, dulling your senses, playing with your mind.

One such champion is Australian swimming prodigy Ian Thorpe. And that is why Pieter van den Hoogenband is our Olympian of the day.

The 22-year-old Dutch swimmer walked out today, for the first heat of the 200m individual freestyle semifinal. He must have known that there was the very real possibility of his reputation being trampled under Thorpe's size 17 feet -- the Aussie had already, earlier in the day, broken the Olympic record in the event with an almost casual ease.

It takes enormous strength of mind to shut out such thoughts, such fears, and to perform.

Van den Hoogenband could have done just enough to qualify for tomorrow's final. He could have played possum, in a bid to ambush Thorpe.

Instead, he choose to challenge the giant. To fling a gauntlet in the Aussie's face.Knowing that Thorpe would be swimming after him, in the second heat, the Dutchman took to the pool and in one exhilarating burst, smashed 0.16s off Thorpe's own world record.

In the space of one minute and a little over 45 seconds, he reduced Thorpe from superhuman, to merely an extraordinary human.

And in doing so, he brought excitement back to the event. A one-horse race is boring -- the sum of sport is competition.

Van den Hoogenband has created that competiton. With his run, he has challenged both himself, and his great rival, to perform prodigies in the pool tomorrow.

More importantly, he had walked into the prodigy's own home pool, looked his seemingly invincible rival in the eye, and made him wilt.

All of us can dream of out-driving a Woods, outrunning a Johnson, outswimming a Thorpe. But then, we wake to our own smallness.

Only the truly extraordinary can actually live that dream.

INGE DE BRUIJN

AT age 25, athletes competing at the highest level are ready to contemplate retirement.

Modern sport is like that. Tough. Intense. Incredibly demanding not just on the body, but on the mind and the nerve. And it is mind and nerve that ages first.

The old have much to lose -- and with that, comes fear. The young, with the future entirely in front of them, are yet to taste the bitter bile of defeat. And hence, do not know how to fear.

Imagine, then, the mind of Inge de Bruijn. At 25, when her peers are considering quitting the nerve-wracking realm of top-flight competition, she makes her ENTRY.

And suddenly, every other competitor becomes irrelevant. In her first year in the major leagues, she wins every major event she enters for. And then she heads into the Olympic year -- an Olympic debut at age 26, if you can imagine it.

In May, she shatters the world record in the 100-metre butterfly. In July, she does it again.

The whispers start -- maybe she is on drugs?

Human beings are like that -- when they see someone else doing something they cannot dream of, they begin looking for reasons. And the reasons they look for are ugly ones -- because it is only then that they can feel good about themselves.

De Bruijn ignores the whispers. And comes to Sydney -- where drug-testing, for the Millenium Games, is the most intense it has ever been in the history of international sport.

And on that stage, against the backdrop of what the organisers promise will be the cleanest Games ever, she steps into the pool -- and smashes her own world record in one scintillating swim.

The world was waiting for her to trip, and fall from the lofty pedestal she ascended so late, and so rapidly. Trip she did, right up to the medals podium to collect her gold, after first collecting a kiss from her boyfriend.

Legends are made of these.