Canadian Olympic champion Maggie Mac Neil announces retirement from swimming

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Olympic champion Maggie Mac Neil announced her retirement from swimming Thursday.

The gold medallist in the women’s 100-metre butterfly at Tokyo’s Summer Games in 2021 made the announcement in an Instagram post alongside a photo of her swimming as a child.

“The little girl above would have never dreamed this is where her love of swimming would take her,” Mac Neil wrote. “I am so grateful for all the memories, people, and places I have gotten to experience just through swimming.

“I’m excited to begin the next chapter of my life journey, as I embark on discovering who I am outside of swimming.”

The 24-year-old from London, Ont., earned a complete set of medals in Tokyo after helping relay teams to silver and bronze medals.

Mac Neil’s five gold medals at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, were the most by a Canadian athlete at a single Pan Am Games.

She was fifth in butterfly and was a member of two women’s relay teams that finished fourth at the recent Olympic Games in Paris.

“Anyone who I crossed paths with never, ever told me I couldn’t achieve my goal of going to the Olympics,” Mac Neil wrote. “It’s still surreal to be able to say I’m a two-time Olympian.”

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She completed her master’s degree in sport management at Louisiana State University this year.

Born in China and adopted by Dr. Susan McNair and Dr. Edward MacNeil, Mac Neil’s mother wanted her to take swimming lessons for safety reasons because of the family’s backyard pool.

Mac Neil’s 2017 diagnosis of sport-induced asthma — which can be triggered by the swimming staples of heat and chlorine — forced a switch from longer distances to sprints.

Mac Neil became Canada’s first world champion in the women’s 100-metre butterfly two years later.

The nearsighted Mac Neil, who doesn’t wear contacts or prescription goggles, has seen multiple times a meme of her squinting hard at the scoreboard in Tokyo as she tried to decipher her result.

“I like to think it helps because I can’t see where other people are and I’m able to focus on my own race,” Mac Neil said before the Olympic Games in Paris. “That was definitely the case in Tokyo.

“I got that meme sent to me at least three times in January even though it’s been three years since.”