'I lost my love for swimming' - Smith comes out of retirement

Having ended a two-year exile from competitive swimming, South Africa's most successful Olympian Tatjana Smith has revealed she "lost the love" for her sport before stepping away from the pool in 2024.

The 29-year-old's decision to retire straight after the Paris Games came as a surprise, given she had just won 200m breaststroke gold in the French capital to add to her 100m title from Tokyo 2020.

But after two years away, which included several months in which she did not swim at all, Smith says she is now "free from the things that made me hate swimming".

"My whole life, I was kind of a robot towards swimming," she told Newsday on the BBC World Service.

"You're so zoned in, you're obsessed with something, so there isn't actually time for you to think about things outside of the pool that you potentially have a passion for.

"I think probably everyone would think that the timing [of retirement] was the worst. But I absolutely 100% believe it was the best decision at that time, and I still have so much peace about it."

Having also picked up a silver medal in both Tokyo and Paris, Smith's total of four Olympic medals for South Africa is matched only by fellow swimmer Chad le Clos, who claimed one gold and three silvers across the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games.

Copyright for this text belongs to BBC.