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Four-time Olympic gold medallist Ariarne Titmus has announced her shock retirement from swimming, saying the seed was sewn by her cancer scare before the Paris Games.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old, who grew up in Tasmania, will retire as one of the greatest distance swimmers of all time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tough one but one that I\u2019m really happy with,\u201d she said in an Instagram video post.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always loved swimming \u2026 but I guess I\u2019ve taken this time away from the sport and realised some things in my life that have always been important to me are just a little bit more important to me now than swimming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the Paris Olympics, Titmus underwent surgery to remove two benign tumours after a large growth was found on her right ovary.<\/p>\n
She described that health scare as a \u201cturning point\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cA turning point for me or a time when a switch was flicked was in the lead-up to the Paris Games, I went through some health challenges, which quite frankly really rocked me mentally.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt probably was the first time where I considered some things outside of swimming.<\/p>\n
\u201cDelving more into those health challenges, I\u2019ve really had to look within and think about what\u2019s most important to me and beyond swimming, I\u2019ve always had goals in my personal life, but swimming has always been most important up until this point and I\u2019ve just realised that those goals and what I want in my future is now more important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut more than anything, I\u2019m excited for what\u2019s next.\u201d<\/p>\n
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This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’<\/strong>.<\/p>\n At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Titmus achieved an historic third individual Olympic gold medal, winning the 400m freestyle in the race dubbed \u2018the race of the century\u2019, where she defeated the other two previous world record-holders of this event \u2013 American all-time great Katie Ledecky and Canadian swimming prodigy Summer McIntosh.<\/p>\n In doing so, Titmus became the first Australian athlete since Dawn Fraser in 1964 to win back-to-back gold medals in the same event.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Titmus credited Ledecky with pushing to become a champion athlete, naming her 2020 Tokyo Olympics, when she edged the 400m world record-holder, as her greatest achievement.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like the first, Tokyo going in as what was deemed the underdog, but I knew in myself I could win and to come from behind and win in Tokyo against the GOAT, that feeling will sit with me forever,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cTo win Olympic gold, it just didn\u2019t have to be the best in the world I had to beat the greatest ever in the world and you know what, someone could look at that as a burden, but I absolutely looked at it as a blessing because I can say without a doubt, without facing Katie, I wouldn\u2019t have been the athlete that I am.\u201d<\/p>\n Titmus, who was named Tasmania\u2019s 2025 Young Australian of the Year, steps away from the sport as the current 200m world record-holder, having won a staggering haul of 33 international medals including eight Olympic medals (four gold, three silver and one bronze) and four world titles.<\/p>\n She said she is hoping to work more in broadcasting and doing public speaking as well as giving back to swimming, particularly working with young athletes who are from regional areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four-time Olympic gold medallist Ariarne Titmus has announced her shock retirement from swimming, saying the seed was sewn by her cancer scare before the Paris Games. The 25-year-old, who grew up in Tasmania, will retire as one of the greatest distance swimmers of all time. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough one but one that I\u2019m really happy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1631,16871,16869,129,16870,7719,222,943,16872],"class_list":{"0":"post-28375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-announces","9":"tag-ariarne","10":"tag-fourtime","11":"tag-gold","12":"tag-medallist","13":"tag-olympic","14":"tag-retirement","15":"tag-swimming","16":"tag-titmus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}