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Svetlana Romashina, seven-time Olympic champion artistic swimmer, retires

Svetlana Romashina

Russia’s Svetlana Romashina competes in the solo free artistic swimming final during the 2019 World Championships at Yeomju Gymnasium in Gwangju on July 17, 2019. (Photo by Manan VATSYAYANA / AFP) (Photo credit should read MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

Russian Svetlana Romashina, the most decorated artistic swimmer in Olympic history with seven gold medals, announced her retirement at age 33.

Romashina entered seven Olympic artistic swimming events and won all of them, starting in 2008. She won four Olympic titles in the team event and three in the duet (two with Nataliya Ishchenko and one with Svetlana Kolesnichenko).

The Tokyo Games marked her last major competition.

Romashina is the only woman to go undefeated in her Olympic career while entering seven or more events. The only man to do so was American track and field athlete Ray Ewry, who won all eight of his Olympic starts from 1900-08, according to Olympedia.org.

Romashina also won 21 world championships medals -- all gold, second in aquatics history behind Michael Phelps’ 26.

She took nearly two years off after giving birth to daughter Alexandra in November 2017, then came back to win three golds at her last world championships in 2019 and two golds at her last Olympics in 2021.

Romashina is now an artistic swimming coach, according to Russian media.

Russian swimmers swept the Olympic duet and team titles at each of the last six Olympics.

Russians have been banned from international competition since March due to the war in Ukraine.

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