Forgotten Camera Kept Ian Thorpe from Being Atop World Trade Center on 9/11
From the Archive
Australian swimming legend Ian Thorpe, who starred at the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games, would have been on the top of the World Trade Center at the time of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks if he hadn’t forgotten his camera. Thorpe’s presence in New York City on that fateful day was first reported by Reuters and confirmed by those within the star’s inner circle.
A teenager at the time of the attacks, Thorpe had been on his way to the Trade Center’s observation deck when he suddenly remembered he had left his camera in his hotel. Thorpe went back to fetch the camera and was about to return to the Trade Center when the first hijacked plane crashed into the twin towers.
“He was probably 20 minutes away from being there,” Frank Turner, one of Thorpe’s managers, told Australian radio.
“He was shocked…a few minutes later and who knows what could have happened?”
Thorpe recalled the morning.
“I went down there on the morning of (Sept. 11),” Thorpe once said. “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…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. 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.”
