Emma McKeon has announced her retirement from competitive swimming, bringing to a close a glittering career in which she won more Olympic medals than any other Australian.
Her haul of 14 medals, including six golds, is the most by any Aussie in Olympic history, placing her firmly into this country’s GOAT conversation. She has also won 20 medals at the Commonwealth Games (14 gold), 20 more at world championship events (five gold), and is an eight-time world record holder in relays, three of which are still standing today.
McKeon, 30, had already flagged that Paris would be her last Olympic Games, and said in an Instagram post on Monday that she had “given everything” to swimming but was ready for her next chapter in life.
As she moves on, let’s look back at her five greatest moments in the pool.
Rio 2016: Her first Olympic gold
McKeon was 17 when she missed out for the 2012 Olympics in London, finishing just one spot away from qualification in trials for the 100 metres freestyle, one-tenth of a second short.
She went along to the Games to watch her brother, David, compete, but was so heartbroken she needed a break from the sport and was even on the verge of quitting altogether. Good thing she didn’t. Her decision to persevere paid off immediately at the next Olympics, winning her first gold medal at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
She led off Australia’s 4×100 metres freestyle relay with a split of 53.41, setting up an overall world record time of 3:30.65 in a team also featuring Brittany Elmslie and the Campbell sisters, Cate and Bronte.
McKeon left Rio with three other medals: two relay silvers and a bronze in the 200 metres freestyle, her first individual medal at the Olympics. But more importantly, she left with a sense of belonging at the level.
Gold Coast 2018: A star is born
This wasn’t her first Commonwealth Games – McKeon took four gold medals away from Glasgow 2014 – but this was her first experience of a major event on home soil. And having moved to the Gold Coast a year prior, relocating with her coach Michael Bohl to train out of Griffith University, this was home soil in more ways than one.
On the tourist strip, where she was one of the faces of the whole shindig, McKeon cemented her superstar status, winning another four gold medals and six overall – three from individual events and three from relays.
She split a 52.99 on the third leg of Australia’s 4×100 metres freestyle relay, with their time of 3:30.05 breaking another world record. No Aussie swimmer has won more medals at a single Commonwealth Games, and this put her only two more away from the overall record of 10.
Tokyo 2020: Individual breakthrough
By 2021, it was clear that McKeon was an excellent relay swimmer. But was she good enough to win individual medals at Olympic level? That nagging question was emphatically answered in Tokyo, where she claimed two solo golds in the 50 and 100 metres freestyle, beating Sweden’s world record holder Sarah Sjöström in both events.
She left with seven medals overall, the most by any female swimmer at a single games, and as Australia’s record-holder for most Olympic medals won by an athlete, surpassing Ian Thorpe and Leisel Jones with a career haul of 11.
Birmingham 2022: Unstoppable
Ten years after missing out on an Olympic berth in the UK and nearly quitting, McKeon was once again considering giving it all away during a three-month spell out of the pool, unsure if she still had the hunger to go on. Distance from the sport she loved once again restored her energy levels – and so she found herself slightly north of London, twelve months on from her blistering display in Tokyo, conquering all before her.
In Birmingham, she won another six gold medals – the equal-most by a single athlete at a Commonwealth Games – and eight in total, bringing her career count to 20 medals, which was also a record.
Paris 2024: Record-breaker
The last hurrah. It wasn’t clear, though, leading into her final Olympics, whether McKeon had a place in Australia’s dominant 4 x 100 metres relay team. They were hunting a fourth consecutive gold medal, and McKeon had been a vital member in two of those campaigns, but such was the fierce competition from a new generation of swimmers, there were no guarantees.
But she rose to the occasion in the trials, squeezing in as the sixth-fasted qualifier before splitting 52.39 in the team’s victory in the final in 3:28.92, an Olympic record time – winning her sixth and final gold medal surpassing Thorpe as Australia’s most successful Olympian in the process.
The most impressive thing? It was her fourth race of the opening day of the Games, having swum two heats in the morning and a 100 metres butterfly semi-final just beforehand.
Nothing sums up her understated, humble style better than her reaction when reporters told her about the record she’d just broken: “I never really keep track of that kind of stuff.”
