On This Day in 2013 – Rebecca Adlington retires from competitive swimming

The Olympic champion called time on her career six months after she had won two bronze medals at her home Games in London.

Rebecca Adlington became a two-time Olympic champion in Beijing in 2008 (John Giles/PA) (PA Archive)

Double Olympic champion and former world record holder Rebecca Adlington announced her retirement from competitive swimming on this day in 2013.

Adlington, a two-time winner at the 2008 Beijing Games, called time on her career six months after she had won two bronze medals at her home Olympics in London.

“I love swimming but as a competitive element and elite athlete I won’t compete any more,” she said.

“I have achieved everything I wanted to. Some people want to milk it all they can. I’ve always said I wanted to finish on a high, despite my love of the sport.”

Aged only 23, Adlington went on to end the year by appearing in ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!’ before becoming a regular pundit for the BBC.

It was the 2008 Olympics where the Mansfield-born swimmer came to prominence with a record-breaking Games.

Adlington won both the 400-metre freestyle and 800-metre freestyle in Beijing to become Britain’s first Olympic swimming champion since 1988.

The teenager’s winning time of 8:14.10 in the 800-metre final broke American Janet Evans’ 19-year record, while her double gold-medal haul made her the first British swimmer to achieve that feat in 100 years.

More medals would be won at the 2009 World Championships in Rome with Adlington claiming two bronzes before she clinched the 400-metre freestyle title at the European Championships in Budapest the following year.

At the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi she repeated her Olympic double with golds in the 400-metre freestyle and 800-metre freestyle events.

More gold-medal success was achieved in the 800m freestyle at the World Championships in 2011 – she won silver in the 400m – and Adlington finished third in both events at her home Olympics in London before she retired from the sport.