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Major update after baffling $150k jewellery robbery at Aussie Olympic great Ian Thorpe's lavish home - despite no signs of a break-in

Major update after baffling $150k jewellery robbery at Aussie Olympic great Ian Thorpe's lavish home - despite no signs of a break-in

Daily Mail​09-06-2025
Fresh details have emerged after it was revealed last week that Australian swimming great Ian Thorpe was the victim of an alleged robbery at his Sydney home.
It is understood that the five-time gold medallist has lost valuables worth an estimated $150,000.
The former swimmer, 42, reported the missing items to Paddington police station last Thursday and officers have now launched an investigation.
Eyebrows had been initially raised over how the items had gone missing after his manager James Erskine told The Sydney Morning Herald last week that there 'seems to be no obvious break-in' at his home.
But 2GB's Ben Fordham revealed a fresh twist on the situation on Monday, claiming that police, as part of their investigations are 'examining a removalist company.'
'Ian Thorpe is of the belief that his watches and jewellery went missing during a move and we can see from property records that late last year, Thorpy sold his home in Woollahra in Sydney's eastern suburbs,' Fordham said during a live broadcast on Monday.
NSW police are investigating the matter as an alleged robbery and are investigating a removalist as part of their inquiries
'We don't know where he's moved to but when Ian Thorpe was moving his possessions, he believes that some went missing. Watches, jewellery, and some other valuable items.
'He doesn't know how much they're worth. But his best guess is $150,000.'
Fordham added: 'We don't have any evidence that they are in any way responsible for the missing items.'
Thorpe is due to return to present Channel 9's coverage of the Australian swimming trials at the South Australia Aquatic and Leisure Centre later this week.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted his agent, James Erskine, for comment.
Last week, Erskine also delivered an update on the situation, revealing that none of Thorpe's Olympic medals were missing. But he stated: 'He has had some things stolen from his house - watches, jewellery, some personal items.
'He called up his insurers, they said go and make a police report.'
Erskine also told The Sydney Morning Herald that Thorpe was doing 'fine' following the shocking discovery.
He adds that the swimmer 'is not too bothered about the material stuff.'
Last week, Thorpe cut a dejected figure as he was photographed shopping near his eastern suburbs home on Friday.
It came just hours after reports emerged that he was missing several sentimental items.
Thorpe, who is Australia's most decorated male Olympic Swimmer, cut a dejected figure as he walked around a supermarket while speaking on the phone.
The Australian has not yet publicly commented on the alleged crime.
New South Wales, meanwhile, issued a statement last week to confirm that they had commenced an investigation.
'At about 4pm on Thursday, June 5, a 42-year-old man attended Paddington police station to report an alleged theft incident,' NSW Police said in a statement.
'Officers attached to eastern suburbs have commenced an investigation into the alleged incident.
The swimming great is understood to have lost around $150,000 following the alleged crime
'There is no further information available at this time.'
Thorpe had taken a financial hit last October after the former swimmer was forced to reduce the listing price of his luxury Sydney home from $3.7million to $3.5m
He had purchased the four-bed, three-bathroom townhouse in 2017 for $2.75m.
The home itself is said to be one of the most stylish and stunning properties in the area, with Thorpe having carried out extensive renovation works to the property.
It features open-plan living areas and a beautiful terrace.
Thorpe had also previously been the subject of an alleged theft in 2005.
It is understood that his Audi TT was broken into while parked in Glebe, in Sydney's inner west. It is understood that thieves stole a watch from the vehicle which was given to Thorpe at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
'The watch that's missing has great sentimental value to me and I would really appreciate it being returned,' Thorpe had said at the time.
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That is an extraordinarily bold and sophisticated protective system.' Prof Michael Nicholas is used to stories like these. 'You can see it in probably every hospital ward. If you stay around long enough you'll hear comments like 'this person has more pain than they should have' or 'you might be surprised that they're not in pain',' he says. 'What that highlights to me is the general tendency for all of us to think there should be a close relationship between a stimulus like an injury or a noxious event and the degree of pain the person feels. 'In fact, that's generally wrong. But it doesn't stop us believing it.' The reason we get it wrong, Nicholas says, 'is that we have a sort of mind-body problem'. Eastern medicine and philosophy has long recognised the interconnectedness of body and mind, and so too did the west in early civilisations. In ancient Greece the Algea, the gods of physical pain, were also gods associated with psychic pain – with grief and distress. 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Later in the night, as I climbed on to an examination bed, I froze. Pain sloshing around my abdomen violently halted my movement. As I stopped there silent, halfway to laying down, I saw the serious look on the doctor's face. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion I realised that perhaps my report of my pain was an unreliable guide. She was looking for other clues. (I would later learn that medical staff use self-reported pain as only one of a few measures to assess a patient, others include observations of movement, the ability to talk, facial expressions and guarding.) It was the middle of the night before an MRI returned the findings that I had spent the day with what the doctor called 'a belly full of blood'. The next day I had surgery. 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But individual toughness or weakness is not what's at play in pain responses, and the same person can have two entirely different reactions to pain-inducing events in different contexts. When Lorimer Moseley tried a heat pad pain test on himself, increasing the temperature on the pad on his hand and noting his rising pain levels, it took removing the pad from his skin to realise he had given himself two-and-a-half-degree burn. 'This happens to people who do a lot of pain research because you just get exposed and your brain doesn't think it's worth protecting you as much as it should,' he says. 'But I put my hand in hot water to do the dishes – I'm hopeless.' Just five years ago the International Association for the Study of Pain revised its definition of pain. The new definition follows what is called a bio-psychosocial model, which recognises not just the biological causes of pain but the role of psychology and social context in creating, amplifying – or dulling – it. While this is the contemporary thinking about pain, says Nicholas: 'Most people don't use it. Most clinicians, unfortunately, even.' The biological causes are clearest. Pain tolerance, researchers speaking to Guardian Australia say, has some genetic component. Red-haired people, for example, Moseley says, have on average a different threshold at which their nerves are triggered by a change in temperature in a heat-based pain threshold test. Complex social factors play a substantial role: multiple studies have found that people from a lower socioeconomic status experience both more chronic pain and, in experimental pain tests, demonstrate lower acute pain thresholds. For all people, injury or tissue damage activates the brain's warning system that creates pain. The associated stress can trigger a psycho-biological response that helps the hurt person get through it without being immobilised. 'Short-term stress actually motivates us,' Day says. 'Gets adrenaline pumping through our bodies, allows us to have natural endorphins to push through. There's also endogenous opioids that our brain releases to have that short-term relief of pain.' The psychological elements are becoming more widely understood. 'One thing we know is perhaps the strongest predictor of pain tolerance is how people think about pain,' Day says. 'If we think 'this is terrible, this is awful, it's going to do me serious damage' – those types of people will have lower tolerance.' This includes people who tend to be anxious or who catastrophise pain. The perception of the damage being done can have a substantial role. A violinist is more likely to report higher levels of pain when a pain stimulus is applied to their dominant playing hand than when their other hand is subjected to the same stimulus, Moseley says – because an injury to their dominant hand could end their career. Farmers are known to delay seeking treatment , he adds. 'It might be that farmers expect that a part of being a farmer is to have pain. So [their brain] doesn't urge them to do anything about it. Their expectation is: you have pain.' Our past experience of pain also plays a substantial role. Should I have another cyst explode, Moseley suggests I might feel more pain – I will have learned that this sensation signals serious damage and should not be ignored. Research suggests men generally have higher pain thresholds than women. Pain fluctuates for women at periods of hormonal change. Moseley says differences in sensitivity in immune systems and response to hormones plays a part. But so does 'the way that they're related to from birth'. 'Nature versus nurture – you can't really separate them,' Day says. 'There's a range of factors there in terms of learning histories about pain and how from a young age responses to pain are very much linked to gender as well – how parents respond to a son versus a daughter.' As psychologists working in pain, Day and Nicholas are interested in what behaviours might help people in pain tolerate or reduce the amount of pain they are experiencing. 'The best coping techniques will be different for different individuals and will be different across different contexts' Day says. Nevertheless, for acute pain suppression – 'I'm not thinking about this because I've got this goal I need to achieve' – can work well in the short term, says Day. ('Longer term, it rebounds.') Emotional regulation strategies, meditation and learning how to calm the body can be effective. Working on beliefs about the pain and shifting attention away from it, says Nicholas, fall under individual control. 'If you can control those factors you will have a better response to pain,' Day says. An individual's sensitivity to reward and punishment plays a role in acute pain thresholds too, Day says. People who are more sensitive to punishment tend more often to retract at the appearance of pain, whereas those more oriented towards rewards are more likely to push through it to achieve a goal, she says. Elite athletes are known to have higher pain thresholds as they are habituated to pain in their training regimes. Which is to say, if you are in a grand final and you think you've got a shot at winning, and you know the national team selectors are watching, your fixation on your goal might increase your ability to ignore the pain radiating from your jaw. Is that what made John Sattler play on? I will never know. He died in 2023. But we know he had all the predispositions for withstanding acute injury: he was habituated to pain as an athlete in a game famed for its big hits, he was reward-oriented in a moment when the stakes were high, he was a male socialised to value withstanding pain as a badge of toughness, and saw toughness valued as a social virtue. The clash would have got his endogenous opioids pumping. His attention was redirected away from his injury. Pain is a protective mechanism but, from all we know about that day, Sattler judged protecting his jaw as less important than claiming the premiership. 'People who think they have a higher pain threshold – we will never know,' Moseley says. 'It's the same human that makes the pain and that tolerates it.' And so the experience of acute pain is caught in the realm of mystery and mythology; where we can understand much of what is happening in a body and part of what is happening in a brain but never actually know what another person feels. The legend of John Sattler goes that after that fateful right hook from Bucknall, the bloodied captain turned to his teammate Matthew Cleary. That no one knew, perhaps not even himself, the damage that had been done to him became his mythological power. 'Hold me up,' he said. 'So they don't know I'm hurt.'

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