Canadian Olympian Rachel Nicol Announces Retirement

Photo Courtesy: Scott Grant

Canadian Olympian Rachel Nicol Announces Retirement

Canadian breaststroker Rachel Nicol, who swam at the 2016 Olympics, has announced her retirement from competitive swimming.

Nicol turns 31 next month. She was vying for a second Olympics after winning gold in the 100 breaststroke and on the 400 medley relay at the 2023 Pan American Games.

She made the announcement on social media.

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A post shared by Rachel Nicol (@cheetah_345)

Nicol wrote, in part:

I am in total control of this decision. I hold the power.

I know that there are no stones left unturned.

I feel content. I feel closure.

I’ve seen it all, for better and for worse.

I want comfort. I want peace.

Sometimes the next step is right in front of you and you just have to take it.

I love swimming. So it’s not goodbye, it’s see you later.

The Pan Am gold was less an inducement to keep pushing for Paris, Nicol told Swimming Canada this week, than a sense of validation for what she had been feeling for a while.

“I’ve contemplated retiring for the last three years but none of those times really felt right,” she said. “I still felt like I needed a bit of closure. I just wanted to finish things on the right footing.”

A conversation with long-time breaststroke combatant Alia Atkinson in 2021 rang truer for her as she finally made the decision.

“I was like, ‘How do you know?’ And she was like, ‘You’ll just know, you’ll get a feeling,’” Nicol said. “Before I kind of felt like retiring but didn’t really want to. Now with it being an Olympic year, I know what it feels like to want to do that preparation and put the time and energy into that to pursue it. It feels right. It’s comforting to know and I’ve sat with that for a little while.”

Nicol qualified for the Rio Olympics in 2016. She made the Olympic final of the 100 breast, finishing fifth. She also swam on the Canadian 400 medley relay that set a pair of national records and finished fifth in the final.

Nicol fell short of the Tokyo Olympics. She remained in the national team picture, though, winning a medley relay bronze medal at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest and the 2022 Short-Course Worlds in Melbourne.

Nicol’s individual honors include gold in the 50 breast and bronze in the 100 at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games and bronze in the 100 breast at the 2015 Pan Am Games. She also swam at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. The Pan Am Games gold, though, was the high point of her international accolades.

Nicol, a native of Regina, Saskatchewan, swam at Lethbridge Swim Club, then the University of Calgary Swim Club. She swam collegiately at SMU, where she received a bachelor’s degree in physiology and sport management. She added a master’s in kinesiology from the University of Calgary. She’s served on Swimming Canada’s High Performance Athlete Advisory Council and the Canadian Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission and said she’s “found a passion in sport governance in Canada.”

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