Paris Olympics: Into Retirement, Tatjana Smith Capped Stellar Career on Her Terms
The mantle of defending an Olympic gold medal weighs heavy on some. That wasn’t the case for Tatjana Smith, with a little semantic aid.
In Tokyo in 2021, Tatjana Schoenmaker made history for South Africa by finishing second in the women’s 100 breaststroke, then grabbing gold in the 200 breast in world record time.
In three years since, the Johannesburg native competed sparingly but enough to win gold at the World Championships and Commonwealth Games. She got married, changed her name and began to contemplate life after swimming once her second Olympics ended with her aged 27.
Tatjana Smith, she made clear in Paris, carried little of the baggage of expectation that Tatjana Schoenmaker might have.
“It’s learning how to deal with that,” she said. “It’s really been through the years how I’ve learned that, and I think was my new surname, the pressure is off. There’s no more Schoenmaker. Everything came with Schoenmaker, so it really just feels like I can swim freely. I’m new and a different person.”
That new person had just as special an Olympics as the old one.
Instead of silver in the 100 and gold in the 200, Smith reversed the placings in Paris. She dominated the rounds in the 100 breast, her time of 1:05.28 in finals slower than the matching 1:05.00s from prelims and semis. It was a clear cut above Tang Qianting of China in the final.
In the 200, Smith and Kate Douglass waged an engrossing battle, going stroke for stroke on the way home. The American ended up on top, in an American record 2:19.24 that was just three tenths off Smith’s former world record. Smith easily claimed the silver medal in 2:19.60, nearly 1.5 seconds ahead of bronze medalist Tes Schouten.
In silver, Smith found unbridled joy, mainly for the quality of the joust with Douglass.
“Everyone wants to touch the wall first,” she said. “But I’m just as happy to get the silver medal, because I love that competitiveness. And it’s amazing to now celebrate the new champion. She has so much more to come. She wasn’t in Tokyo (in the 200 breast) so I never got to race that Olympic final with her, so I think that’s just exciting on its own.”
Smith’s joy after the 200 was magnified by her immediate retirement from swimming. She did so with just a modicum of hesitation, joking that she might find her way back to the pool in a matter of days out of boredom, but with genuine excitement at the prospect of finding her identity as something other than a swimmer.
Though Tokyo was her first Olympics, Smith had been on the international stage for a half-decade to that point, starting with when she swept golds at the 2015 African Games. A double gold medalist at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, a medalist at two World University Games and winner of a silver medal at the World Championships in Gwangju in 2019 in the 200 breast, her Olympics medals in Tokyo were less an arrival than the last addition to an already full resume.
Smith’s second medal in Paris gave her four career, tying her with Chad le Clos as South Africa’s most decorated swimmer. She took much more than just that designation with her into her post-swimming life.
“To end off my career with big fight was so worth it,” Smith said. “And I’m so grateful that I still get to walk away with a medal. Leaving my career walking away from the Olympics with two medals and a double Olympian, I can’t complain.”
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Quietly humble + fiercely competitive + open-faced honest = true role-model.