Three outstanding female swimmers reflected on how best to find a new direction after retirement as part of the first European Aquatics Media Webinar for Athletes which took place on the EA Academy’s Educational Platform on February 5.
EA Bureau member Pernille Blume, who retired in 2022 having won Olympic 50m freestyle gold for Denmark at the Rio 2016 Games, Spain’s Emma Garcia, who ended her artistic swimming career last summer after winning European mixed duet free and technical gold, and Germany’s current double European women’s open water swimming champion Leonie Beck gave attending athletes – who numbered just short of 200 – the benefit of their thoughts and experiences on this challenging topic.
Blume, 30, who also won Olympic 50m freestyle bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Games, admitted that she wished she had given greater consideration to her post-competitive career while she was still an active athlete, but added that the experience and discipline of a top-class aquatics career could always be made to tell positively in other fields of endeavour.
“I actually wasn’t thinking too much about it when I decided to stop my career,” she said. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to get into, which is always a bit scary because you don’t know about the unknown.
“It’s really a journey where you need a lot of patience with yourself.
“I would say it’s kind of like a wild ride but in a fun way as well because, for me at least, I didn’t have any specific goals or certain areas where I wanted to get to, so I just kind of went on the journey .
“And that’s very different to the mindset of being a swimmer, where we always work towards a specific goal. We had a fixed time on our goal, a timeline, so when you retire from swimming it’s like a blank page into your life.
“It can be a little bit overwhelming as well knowing that you’ve got so many opportunities and where to start and to begin in all this.
“So I would say have a lot of patience, have fun. Also try different things, because you might find yourself thinking ‘no, that’s not for me’ and then you try and you actually realise that that is something for you, now, as the person you are post your career.
“Trying different things and saying yes to the opportunities and challenges is really important. Because you will figure out that there is so much you have learned from your swimming career, or your aquatics career, your sporting career, that you can bring with you to work.
“You don’t build a post-career within a month, typically. It can take years to build a career after your sporting career. And that is OK, and that’s normal. I think that is the most important thing to emphasise.”
She added with a broad grin: “If there is one thing that I would have liked to have done differently it was to think more about my post-career when I was an athlete. Because I didn’t think about it at all!
“And you have such a good opportunity to network while you are an athlete, and you will meet a lot of people that genuinely want something good for you, people behind the scenes and so on, because maybe someday you will be the person the scenes and it’s just good to have a connection and a relation to the ones working.”
Garcia, 26, who is a member of the EA Athletes Committee, commented: “My situation is a little bit opposite from Pernille because I was thinking about what I wanted to do after my sport career.
“I am a vegan athlete and I was thinking about doing something about this because a lot of people ask me for help about how to become vegan and how to do a good transition into it and how to do things right.
“So a year and a half ago I started to think about ‘OK, what can I do for helping these people, and to make profit from the person that I am and the authority that I have, because I am a professional athlete winning some medals being vegan.’
“I was thinking about this and I was developing a programme to help people to be vegan. And that helped me so much to make a transition after my sporting career was over, to have something to focus on and to know what I had to do in my day, an objective to keep working towards.
“So I think it is definitely something to think about – but don’t stress too much because I was lucky to find this pretty quickly. Maybe you cannot, and as Pernille said, you can just have fun, try things and you may be surprised when you try something and realise it’s for you. But take your time, don’t stress!”
Beck, 27, who won world 5km and 10km gold in 2023, added: “I think Pernille said it perfectly because the sport at one point has an end, whether you decide to end it or you’re injured and the sport is ended for you. You cannot do the sport for the rest of your life, everybody is not made for this.
“So it doesn’t matter when it ends but you have to prepare for this moment. For me, I am thinking for some years I am thinking about one point when the sport will end, if now or in 2028 or 2032 of whatever.
“But I’m afraid of this moment if I don’t have anything. That’s where a lot of athletes fall in depression at the end of their career. Because we are living a really special life compared to what’s afterwards for us.
“Our sport is full of emotions, even maybe if it’s not football or tennis and we don’t get as much money or attention. And because of this we are treated as if we are someone special or we are doing something special.
“And when the moment comes and we stop we are no-one any more, in our mind.
“Of course everyone is a person behind the medal, but I think the moment comes when you start thinking, ‘OK, who am I, next to the medals, behind the sport?’
“And I think it’s important to find out who you are already during your career. What do you like, when you talk about trying things. Also to find out what you don’t like. I think it’s important to think during the career about what you want to do afterwards.
“Me for example – I did a Masters in media communications, so I have a document and I can start in a company with a Plan B. If it’s not what I want to do then you have to start in a career connecting with people like Pernille said. So think about something!”
The recording of the Media Webinar can be found here