Singapore’s only Olympic champion bids farewell as ‘Flying Fish’ swimmer Joseph Schooling retires
- Schooling stunned the world when he beat the legendary Michael Phelps to win gold at 2016 Rio Olympics
- He says swimming has ‘forged a resilience in me that I will carry forward into my next chapter’
Joseph Schooling, the swimmer who won Singapore’s first and to date only Olympic gold medal in 2016, announced on Tuesday that he had retired from the pool at the age of 28.
Known in the city state as “Singapore’s Flying Fish”, Schooling stunned the swimming world when he beat his boyhood hero Michael Phelps to win the 100 metres butterfly with a time of 50.39 seconds at the Rio Olympics.
Schooling found it difficult to match that level of global success after 2016, winning a solitary bronze medal at the 2017 World Championships and crashing out in the heats in his title defence at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
“Today marks the beginning of a new chapter – I will be retiring from competitive swimming,” he said in a message posted on Facebook.
“I am filled with gratitude for every experience that swimming has brought into my life. The victories were exhilarating, the defeats humbling, and together, they have forged a resilience in me that I will carry forward into my next chapter.”