Seven-time Olympic medalist Amanda Beard hasn’t been seen much, if at all, in competition since the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials. But she’s not done swimming yet.
“The way that I look on my swimming career is as long as I’m physically capable of doing it,” Beard told the Springfield (Ill.) Journal-Register. “I don’t want to look back in 30 years and say, ‘Man, I could’ve kept swimming. Why didn’t I do it when I had the chance and opportunity?’ Whether or not you make the Olympics, who cares?”
Beard, 32, attempted to make her fifth straight U.S. Olympic Team in 2012 but finished fifth in the 200m breaststroke and 10th in the 100m breast at the Olympic Trials, where only the top two made the team for London.
She gave birth to her second child in June 2013, daughter Doone, and appeared on the reality show “Celebrity Wife Swap” in June of this year. Still, she swims.
“Swimming is kind of my hobby that I take pretty seriously,” Beard said, according to the newspaper.
Beard burst onto the scene at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, where she won two silvers and one gold as a teddy bear-toting 14-year-old.
“To think back about being 14 and winning a gold medal, it kind of boggles my mind a little bit that I was at that point in my life to be able to do something like that,” Beard said.
