Olympic bronze medallist MacLean announces retirement from competitive swimming

OTTAWA — Canada’s Brittany MacLean, who raced to an Olympic relay bronze at the 2016 Rio Games, announced her retirement from competitive swimming on Monday.

MacLean made her Olympic debut at the 2012 London Games and swam the third leg in the women’s 4×200-metre freestyle race in Rio. After Katerine Savard and Taylor Ruck swam the first two legs, MacLean held the team in third before Penny Oleksiak finished the race in a Canadian record time of seven minutes 45.39 seconds.

MacLean, from Toronto, had hoped to reach the podium in her individual events as well, but her plans were derailed by an untimely illness in Rio. She finished fifth in the 400 metres and settled for 10th-place finishes in the 200 and 800.

“It was incredible to be a member of that relay team and leave Rio as an Olympic medallist, but I was not satisfied with my performances,” she said in a release. “I was in better shape than I ever thought I could be and was just super confident. It’s hard to accept that’s the way I was going to go out.”

MacLean, 22, also helped the University of Georgia Bulldogs win a U.S. college championship earlier in the year. She will now focus on finishing her degree in sport management at the school.

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“It was cool to be a part of the Ryan Cochrane/Julia Wilkinson/Brent Hayden era, and now it’s the world of Penny (Oleksiak), Taylor (Ruck) and almost every single woman on the team was in finals,” she said.

MacLean finished seventh in the 400 freestyle at the London Games. She battled hamstring and shoulder injuries at times through the next quadrennial.

“How she managed herself through the tough times of dealing with injuries in 2013 and 2015, and then got herself back to become an Olympic medallist is an absolute credit to Brittany, her support staff and her coaches,” said Swimming Canada high-performance director John Atkinson. “She has been a great competitor for Swimming Canada and to finish her career with an Olympic medal in Rio was a great achievement.”

The Canadian Press