New Zealand’s Lauren Boyle Announces Retirement
Freestyle swimming champion, Auckland-born Lauren Boyle, 29, has announced her retirement from competition.
The announcement on Boyle’s Facebook page read:
“And, that’s a wrap. I feel lucky to love the sport after all these years. It has been a blast and I’m so grateful for the friends I made, some incredible coaches I worked with and the teammates and competitors I had to push me along the way. It was an honour to represent New Zealand the best way I could. Thanks for the memories.”
Boyle has six other World Championship medals on her resume between both short course and long course competitions. She added a bronze in the 400 free to her gold in 2012, and earned bronze in a trio of distance events at the 2013 Championships in Barcelona. She followed this up with a silver in both the 800 and 1500 in Kazan in 2015.
Additionally, Boyle is known for her controversial World Record in the 1500 free in 2015. This effort, combined with her Kazan performances, earned her New Zealand Swimmer of the Year honours that year. In 2014, she earned four awards at the annual Swimming New Zealand Awards.
She leaves the sport as a one of New Zealand’s all-time best. Boyle won two silver medals at the 2015 World Championships, is a Commonwealth Games gold and silver medallist and a three-time Olympian.
She studied on scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she won a team national championship in 2009 and graduated from the Haas School of Business in 2011.
Former US Women’s Olympic coach and coach at UC Berkeley Teri McKeever, says of Boyle: “Lauren’s journey in and out of the pool has been inspiring for so many. Her tremendous work ethic, attention to detail and quest to be the best version of herself is one I refer to often. Like any journey, Lauren’s has had its highs and lows, and at the end of the day she has always represented herself and her country with grace and dignity. I am excited to see her take her champion’s mindset into the next chapters of her life.”
Original article by Swimming World Magazine, July 31, 2017.
Photo by Ian MacNicol.
