By: Jackson Liu

Australian swimming superstar Ariarne Titmus shocked everyone when she admitted on the opening night of the national trials on Tuesday that she has plans to quit the sport after next year’s Paris Olympics. Just 22 years old, Titmus says she still expects to stay in the sport beyond Paris, but that she has started to think about retirement. “With the intensity of my training and the intensity of having to perform on the world stage, I can’t think about anything else than the next 12 months,” she said. She plans to continue swimming, but she might not participate in the next Olympics after Paris.

If Titmus really does quit the sport, it would be shocking because she is an amazing, once in a generation, talent. People started admiring her after winning gold for the 200 and 400 meter freestyle at the Tokyo Olympics, famously beating America Katie Ledecky. She didn’t show any sign that she wanted to stop when she booked her place on the Australian team for next month’s world championships in Japan, getting a time of 3:58.47. But, she later said that she was disappointed by the time, because she wanted to go faster in case it was her last time attempting the great distance. She says if she wins the gold at Paris, she might have the motivation to continue.

“It becomes harder to keep practicing at the same level after you have achieved everything you have wanted to achieve,” says Titmus. “At the moment, I’m trying to forget about what I’ve achieved in my swimming career. I’m just trying to be that young kid that I was when I first started swimming, to draw motivation from ‘I love swimming and that’s why I swim’ and everything else that’s happened is a bonus.”

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