Sweden’s Sarah Sjöström does not plan to swim competitively in 2025 but could bid for a sixth Olympics in 2028.
A rep for Sjöström confirmed the swimmer’s plans, which were reported by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) on Saturday.
Sjöström won the 50m and 100m freestyles at the Paris Olympics, becoming at age 30 the second-oldest female swimming gold medalist in an individual event.
“As it is now, I have no competitions planned,” Sjöström said, according to a translation of the DN report. “I will train, but at a low load and then slowly increase. I think that is the best way to last in the long run.”
Sjöström, a six-time Olympic medalist who got married in September, has competed at every Olympics and World Championships dating to the 2008 Beijing Games when she was 14.
She is a 25-time world championships medalist, ranking second in women’s swimming history behind Katie Ledecky (26).
She owns the most individual world medals of any swimmer (20). She is third in individual golds (14) behind Ledecky (16) and Michael Phelps (15).
She does not plan to add to those totals at next summer’s worlds in Singapore, but could try to at the 2027 Worlds in Budapest ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“Just qualifying for my sixth Olympics would be awesome, but it’s clear that it would be even more awesome if I can be close to the times I swam in Paris,” Sjöström said, according to DN. “Above all then in the 50m freestyle.
“But when the Olympics are decided in LA I will be almost 35 years old, and then you have to think. In both the fall of 2022 and 2023, I had an extremely easy time competing, and my body responded very well to that. It was as if I came back stronger because I was fresh when I then started the hard training.”
