By any measure apart from the brave low points of Melbourne 2007, Grant Hackett should be heading to Beijing with great expectations weighing heavily on his much-travelled shoulders.

Not how Hackett sees it, though: the 1,500m champion of 2000 and 2004 and one of the three men who could make history in Beijing by winning a third successive title (Hall Jr, 50m freestyle; Van den Hoogenband, 100m freestyle), says the pressure is all on his young rivals heading into the Olympic Games.

Hackett is hardly likely to say anything else, of course. His destiny is not only down to what he is capable of: the man who will get to him in Beijing is the man who can handle the pressure of the biggest or arenas and take the distance freestyle races to places where no great has gone before. We know Larsen Jensen (USA) can and we know David Davies (GBR) can. Facing their first Olympic Games as favourites to take gold are world champions Mateusz Sawrymowicz (POL) and Tae-hwan Park (KOR), the men who claimed the 1,500m and 400m titles ahead of Hackett at Melbourne 2007.

Hackett, 27, is happy to heap all pressure on them: 'I have won at an Olympics before. I don't feel like I have to prove myself. I mean these guys are going into their first ones, so the pressure really is on them and pressure is really on guys like Park and Mateusz [Sawrymowicz]. I know what it feels like wanting to win an Olympic gold medal and you do put a lot of pressure on yourself and I don't think that is really healthy,' Hackett told reporters in Australia today.

He better not look to history for precedence: a young world champion and pretender to the Olympic throne in 2000, Hackett confined to history the experience of a man who had nothing to prove: Kieren Perkins (1992 and 1996 Olympic champion).

Hackett added: 'I feel a lot more comfortable at this stage of my career with the experience I've got and the way I'm enjoying the sport.' In Beijing he will enjoy the 1,500m (as well as the 400m and 4x200m relay, should he qualify) and has booked a berth in Seville next May for trials to enter the inaugural Olympic 10km marathon race.

On the 30-lap challenge, he said: 'People say the third gold medal there's a lot of pressure, but it's not to be honest. It's fun, I'm enjoying it.' On the 400m, with a nod to Park, he added: 'His advantage is that he is young and he's improving all the time, my advantage is that I am old and I've got that all that experience behind me. I've been to a couple of Olympic Games before and I know what it's like to have success at that level. I know what works and what doesn't work for me at that level and it is a very different arena.'

No question about it - and if he emerges ahead in any of the pool swims - not to mention out in the bigger pool, the chlorinated rowing lake - his illustrious career will deserve a hallowed plinth in the Pantheon.