A forgotten camera sent Ian Thorpe back, narrowly keeping him from the World Trade Center that morning.

Ian Thorpe was only 18 when a forgotten camera changed the course of one September morning. The Australian swimming sensation was in New York on September 11, 2001, and had planned to visit the observation deck of the World Trade Center. He had already gone for an early morning run, grabbed a coffee and was making his way towards the towers when he realised he had left his camera behind at his hotel.So Thorpe turned around.That seemingly insignificant decision meant he was back in his hotel room when the first hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center. What followed changed the world, and Thorpe would later look back on those few minutes as an extraordinary stroke of fate.“He was probably 20 minutes away from being there,” one of Thorpe’s managers, Frank Turner, told Australian radio.“He was shocked… a few minutes later and who knows what could have happened?”Thorpe himself has described the experience as a “very, very close call”, saying that moments like it made him realise “some things were meant to be”. It was a narrow escape that came just weeks after the teenager had produced one of the greatest performances in swimming history.

Ian Thorpe was already a swimming phenomenon before his brush with fate

Thorpe was not simply a promising young swimmer when he arrived in New York. By September 2001, he was already a global sporting star.Just months earlier, at the 2001 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, he had won six gold medals and established four world records. His records came in the men’s 200m freestyle, 400m freestyle, 800m freestyle and Australia’s 800m freestyle relay.His times were extraordinary: 1:44.06 in the 200m freestyle, 3:40.17 in the 400m, 7:39.16 in the 800m and 7:04.66 as part of Australia’s 800m freestyle relay.That performance had followed an equally memorable Olympic debut on home soil in Sydney in 2000.

By the time Thorpe returned to his hotel room on September 11, then, he was already a five-time Olympic champion.And his career was only beginning.Thorpe went on to produce another defining Olympic performance at the 2004 Games in Athens, where he won the men's 200m freestyle in what became known as the “Race of the Century”. He defeated defending champion Pieter van den Hoogenband and American teenager Michael Phelps in one of the most anticipated races of the Games.He also successfully defended his Olympic title in the 400m freestyle, edging fellow Australian Grant Hackett, while adding silver in the 800m freestyle relay and bronze in the 100m freestyle.His international résumé continued to grow. Thorpe won another three World Championship titles in 2003, while a year earlier he had set a world record of 3:40.08 in the 400m freestyle at the 2002 Commonwealth Games.That mark was only surpassed in 2009, when Germany’s Paul Biedermann went 0.01 seconds faster in a high-tech super-suit. Thorpe’s time remains the fastest 400m freestyle ever recorded in a textile suit.He ultimately retired in 2006 after withdrawing from the Commonwealth Games because of bronchitis. Five years later, he attempted a comeback with the goal of qualifying for the 2012 London Olympics, but fell short at the Australian Olympic Trials.His life after elite swimming has also remained closely connected to issues beyond sport. Thorpe has advocated for same-sex marriage in Australia and spoken openly about his struggles with depression and the difficulties he experienced navigating life as an elite athlete as a gay man. In 2017, he presented a two-part documentary examining the effects of bullying.But when Thorpe thinks back to September 11, the extraordinary list of medals and records is not what makes that morning remarkable.He had been in New York with plans to see the World Trade Center. He had intended to visit it with a friend, Michelle, who was staying with him. Instead, Thorpe was the one who went down alone, realised he had forgotten his camera and turned back.

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“I went down there on the morning of 9/11,” Thorpe recalled. “It was early in the morning and I went for a run. I grabbed a coffee and walked back to my hotel room, and literally in that period of time the planes hit.”“It was a very, very close call.”Thorpe later said he and his friend had talked about visiting the World Trade Center in the morning and the Empire State Building at night.Instead, a forgotten camera sent him back to his hotel at almost exactly the moment his plans needed to change.“I said to a friend we could go up the World Trade Center in the morning and then you do the Empire State Building at night,” Thorpe said. “But in the end, I was the one that went down there. With things like that, you realize it’s fate. Some things were meant to be, and I realize I am very lucky.”