Do we like Ian Thorpe?
Our score: 9 out of 10. Years of publicly backing LGBTQ+ protections, with one old doping claim that he denied and that, in the reports I read, ended without a finding.
Ian Thorpe is a five-time Olympic swimming champion, and for a long stretch he was one of the most recognisable faces in Australian sport. In 2014, aged 31, he sat down with Michael Parkinson on Channel 10 and said he wasn't straight.
That interview had a sting in it, because he had denied it before, including in his 2012 autobiography. He said the secret had grown until it felt too big to undo, and he was scared people would question his integrity. Fellow athletes, celebrities and activists rallied behind him on social media afterwards.
The messiest chapter is the doping saga. In 2007 French paper L'Equipe reported that a May 2006 test allegedly showed unusual testosterone and luteinising hormone levels. Thorpe denied cheating and said there were innocent medical explanations. Australia's anti-doping body reportedly dropped the case for lack of scientific proof, FINA took it to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and the reporting I read gives no final ruling or violation. He later dropped his defamation suit in 2009 after the defendants didn't respond.
On the harm check, the headline moment is 2022, when he said FINA had got it wrong on banning trans women from elite women's events. He framed it around fairness and equality, said the fairness worries were overstated and called a broader expert discussion. Olympic champions Cate Campbell and Emily Seebohm had welcomed the ruling, so where you land depends on whether you see the rule as protecting competition or shutting trans people out. For this page, his side of it is plainly the supportive one.
The rest of his public record points the same way. In 2017 he backed the yes campaign for same-sex marriage, saying it mattered for the message it sent to a younger version of himself. In October 2025 he became a patron of Equality Australia, urging a national Hate Crimes Register and stronger federal protections from hate.
He's also taken the fight beyond his own corner. In 2023 he was in Poland for the March of the Living Holocaust education program, and told 3AW's Neil Mitchell that prejudice isn't just his problem: “If it happens to me, it can happen to anyone else.” I found no sign of him pushing conspiracy theories or platforming people who do, though the record on climate and public health is thin because he hasn't said much.