Hot Rice no match for Thorpe

Golden girl Stephanie Rice's Beijing treble topped Australia's favourite Olympic moments but she still couldn't fill the huge shoes of Ian Thorpe.

Swimming was unsurprisingly the country's most popular sport at the Beijing Games but its support dropped significantly from the 2004 Olympics when Thorpe reigned the pool.

In Athens, as well as the 2000 Sydney Games, 47 per cent of Australians nominated swimming as their favourite sport to watch on television.

But that figure dropped to 30 per cent in Beijing, according to Sweeney Sports' 2008 Beijing Games Report, the company's fifth post-Olympics poll.

Sweeney Sports general manager Todd Deacon attributed the drop to the lack of an Australian swimming superstar such as Thorpe.

More than one in every five Australians (21 per cent) named Rice as their favourite Beijing performer for her hat-trick of gold medals in the 200m and 400m individual medleys and 4x200m freestyle relay.

Unlike Thorpe, though, Rice didn't have the name, results or expectation going into this year's Olympic campaign.

"While the swimming team is peppered with stars, the absence of a superstar like Thorpe, who was at the previous two Olympic Games, was undoubtedly a key factor in the decline," Deacon said.

"And we can see that in the athletics as well ... which lacked a superstar in the Cathy Freeman class.

"The `Freeman factor' resulted in 18 per cent of Australians saying they enjoyed athletics the most during the Sydney Games, but that proportion decreased to just six per cent during Beijing."

Time zone differences which resulted in late programming didn't help athletics' popularity, with the two biggest performances - pole vaulter Steve Hooker's gold and hurdler Sally McLellan's silver - occurring near midnight AEST.

Gymnastics was the surprise sport, polling 15 per cent - almost twice as much as 2004 - to be the second most popular ahead of the opening ceremony (8%) and diving (7%).

Despite Australia's lack of world-class performers, Deacon said gymnastics polled highly among women and its prime time programming also aided its popularity.

The survey was conducted in the week immediately following the Games, involving interviews with 1,002 Australians.