ABSTRACT
August 16, 2004: the body of Ian Thorpe breaks the water of the Olympic pool in Athens. Under two minutes later, Thorpe surfaces, having traveled 400 meters through water 0.64 seconds inside Pieter van den Hoogenband’s Olympic record. In 1 minute 44.71 seconds exactly, Thorpe has set in motion processes and mechanisms of immense complexity: every one of his 600 muscles has contracted, stretched, and twisted; his lungs have filled and emptied repeatedly; his heart has pumped at least 50 gallons (227 liters) of blood into all areas of the body. All this has been made possible by the intricate organizing and synchronizing capacity of his brain, which has submitted his entire body to one purpose for the duration of the race, the performance.
