A member of Australia’s Olympic gold medal-winning women’s 4x100m medley team has called time on her swimming career just months before Paris.
Chelsea Hodges, a member of Australia’s gold medal-winning women’s 4x100m medley relay team at the Tokyo Olympics, has made the shock decision to retire from professional swimming, effective immediately.
A bronze medallist in the 100m breaststroke final at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Hodges knew her continued participation in swimming could adversely impact her future quality of life. Since Tokyo, life has not been easy for Hodges, who has battled chronic injuries since she was 13. Doctors said Hodges was growing too quickly, a theory her mother didn’t believe.
Last year, things became worse. A stress fracture in her back forced Hodges out of the water for six weeks. After her next session, she couldn’t walk.By December, Hodges thought she was back on track, but her injury flared up again at a competition in Japan, forcing her to literally limp to the starting blocks for a race in which she ended up finishing second. It would be her last competitive race.“I begged my coach to go home. He was on the same page as me,” Hodges said.
The time had come. Hodges wanted to know what her life would look like if she kept swimming. Was the pain only going to get worse?
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