Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus’ father Steve opens up on retirement call, proudest moment of swimming career

She conquered the pool — but it’s the praise from rivals that says the most about Ariarne Titmus, according to her proud father Steve.

Titmus, 25, made the shock announcement that she was retiring from swimming today.

“It’s a tough one, but one that I’m really happy with,” Titmus said on Instagram in a video accompanied with a statement, below.

“I’ve always loved swimming, but I guess I’ve 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.”

With four Olympic gold medals, eight in total and four world titles, the Australian superstar walks away from the sport with a staggering 33 international medals and the 200m freestyle world record.

That decision came 12 months after the Paris Olympics, where she defeated US legend Katie Ledecky and Canadian teenage prodigy Summer McIntosh in the 400m freestyle, dubbed “the race of the century”.

Her rivalry with Ledecky spanned years and was fierce but friendly, with the 28-year-old among the first to offer her congratulations to Titmus.

“An outstanding competitor, champion and person,” Ledecky wrote, while McIntosh echoed that sentiment: “Congratulations on an incredible career and all the very best in your next chapter. You will be missed.”

Titmus’ father Steve, a sports broadcaster with 7News, said it was testament to his daughter that her biggest rivals were also some of her most vocal supporters.

“It tells us what sort of person she is,” he told The Nightly.

“She’s very genuine. What you see is what you get with Ariarne, and she has developed tremendous rivalry in the pool with people like Katie Ledecky, but with that, out of the pool, they’re friends, and we’re enormously proud of that, because she is authentic.

“A fiercely determined young girl from a very young age. And that has shown throughout her career. And she’s been able to be the competitor, and at the same time, be a really, really great human.”

The announcement took the nation, and sporting world, by surprise, coming less than a year before the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and three years out from the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

And it was a decision that she made on her own with the support of her family.

“She spent 12 months out of the pool, and we left her to her own devices to work out what she wanted to do,” her father said.

“And then recently, she came to us and we just sat down over the dinner table and we discussed casually. What her thoughts were, how she was going, how she felt life was, and what she wanted to achieve in the rest of her life.

“And so she made up her mind what she wanted to do. And it was all quite casual, really. There was no pressure on her to continue swimming or to stop swimming. It was a decision that she had to make on her own.

“It’s obviously very emotional for us as a family because it’s one of enormous pride in what Ariana has achieved, but not only what she achieved in the pool, but the incredible young woman that she’s grown into, and I think who she’s become out of the pool is what we’re mostly proud of.

“When we moved from Tasmania to Queensland, there wasn’t this expectation that ‘we’ve moved for you, therefore you must become an Olympian and become an Olympic champion’. That was never, ever applied to Ariane, or indeed, her sister in any way.

“If it hadn’t have worked out as it did, we’d have started a whole new life in Queensland and headed off on a great adventure. It turned out the adventure was pretty good.”

Titmus revealed her desire to become a mum last year.

“My body isn’t just a vehicle to train, my body’s purpose, really, is to carry a child one day,” she told the Inherited podcast.

She said yesterday she was an unlikely Olympic gold medallist, given she was born and raised in Tasmania, before her family moved to Queensland to help their then 14-year-old realise her potential.

“I come from the most southernmost place in this country, freezing, the pools aren’t open outdoors for seven months of the year, and I was able to take it to the world and I probably shouldn’t have,” she said.

“I think I’m a testament to setting big goals and chasing them and not being afraid of them and swimming’s helped me realise that anything is possible if you work for it.”

For Steve, pictured, there are many proud moments across her career that brought him pride. But there is one that stands above all — the 400m freestyle victory in Tokyo.

“We were unable to go to the Tokyo Olympics because of COVID, and so all of the parents from the swimming squad we assembled at a resort in Noosa, where we watched the Tokyo Olympics,” he said.

“When Arnie won the 400m defeating Katie Ledecky, hat was a moment that is still, today, I’m lost for words to describe what a thrill that was, how proud we were of her at that time… that moment, as a moment in time, brought everything together, from her growing up as a child to our move to Queensland.

“When she touched the wall and Basil Zempilas said in the commentary, ‘to be a legend, you have to beat a legend’, that just summed up many, many years of training, of determination and dedication to her sport in that very moment. It summed up, really, her entire life up to that point.”

Her family was poolside as she repeated the feat in Paris last year, beating Ledecky and McIntosh to become the first Australian athlete to win back-to-back gold medals in the same event since Dawn Fraser in 1964.

“Those moments are tremendous moments of her sporting career. And now, there’s a new chapter in her life to be lived, and we’re very excited about what that brings.”