Olympic Gold Medalist Lilly King Announces Intent to Retire after 2025 Season
Olympic gold medalist Lilly King announced on social media Saturday that she intends to retire after the 2025 season. That makes Worlds trials in Indianapolis potentially her last meet.
King made the announcement on Instagram.
King wrote in part:
This will be my final season competing. I’m fortunate heading into retirement being able to say I have accomplished everything I have ever wanted in this sport. I feel fulfilled.
King had said last summer when she qualified for the Paris Olympics that she would be in Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics only as a fan, with no intent to swim through to those Games.
That the final meet of domestic career will be at the IU Natatorium is fitting for King, an Evansville native of Indiana University standout. It’ll cap 18 years of racing in Indianapolis, where she’s been competing since age 10. It’s also where she got engaged last summer.
King, 28, swam at three Olympics. She won gold in the 100 breaststroke at the Rio Olympics in 2016, then bronze in that event in Tokyo five years later to go with 200 breast silver. King owns six all-time Olympic medals, three of them gold.
At the Paris Olympics, King tied for fourth in the 100 breast, .01 off the podium. She was eighth in the 200 and bagged her third gold medal.
She is an 11-time long-course and seven-time short-course World Champion, with 27 total medals at Worlds competition. That includes titles in the 50-meter breaststroke at Worlds in 2017 and 2019 and silver in 2023. Even the inclusion of 50-meter strokes for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles was not enough to entice King to go back on her word that she would be in Los Angeles only as a spectator.
King holds the long-course meters American records in both the 50 and 100 breast as well as the U.S. Open record in the 50. The 100-meter mark of 1:04.13 is the world record. She holds the SCM American marks in the 50 and 100 and the U.S. Open record in the 200. Her 100-yard breaststroke mark from NCAAs in 2019 also stands as the American record.
