27-year old Australian swimmer Jessicah Schipper has officially retired from competitive swimming, Swimming Australia announced on Monday morning.
The three-time Olympian hasn’t raced since the summer of 2012, where she made Team Australia in the 100 and 200 fly but failed to final in either.
Schipper, who got pregnant during the Olympic Games, never made a serious return to competitive swimming after giving birth in early 2013.
“I’m looking forward to spending more time with my wonderful husband Brett and my son Robbie.”
“I’m leaving the sport with some amazing friends and memories. I’ve received some incredible support throughout my career from my family, my coaches, my teammates and my sponsors, in particular Swimming Australia, QAS, Adidas and Australia Post.
“I’m looking forward to spending more quality time with my family and starting my new job at Swimming Queensland,” Schipper said.
Schipper’s resume is loaded with medals, including four from the Olympics (two gold and two silver) and 9 career World Championships. That includes winning back-to-back golds in the 200 fly at the 2007 and 2009 long course World Championships. She also earned five gold medals at the Commonwealth Games between 2006 and 2010.
She also previously held the 200 fly World Record on two separate occasions: once from 2006 through 2008, and again for about four months in 2009.
She retires still holding the Austrlaian and Commonwealth Records in the 100 and 200 meter butterflies.
Thanks Sandra
She still pops into schools and swimming clubs, though not as frequently as she used to.
she loves sharing her stories and showing the kids her medals and i love going with her and listening to what she says. I especially love it when the kids ask questions. She always seems to know the right thing to say to satisfy their inquiry.
Cheers
Jess is a legend!.to still hold those records is amazing! sent my daughter to a jx clinic..jess was doing the sign in…i say to my daughter…get jess’s autograph too…other mums were like huh? but we know! and jess was happy to sign, and was so patient with the kids, she is just lovely! glad she has a job with swimming qld, so staying involved in the sport – that’s even better!
Where did my comment go?
I wrote like five fat paragraphs, and then it was posted, but when I refreshed this article, my comment gone…
Hi aswimfan – as we’ve explained several times, we have an automatic spam system that will both flag all comments by new commenters and will cue off of certain words. Sometimes it does funny things, like pick up parts of words that might be a gray-listed word (we had a commenter called LiquidAssets whose comments were all sent to spam until we specifically told it to skip him).
Not sure what exactly set it off in your comment, but I assume it was some glitch like that. Your comment is now live.
i’ll take a guess.. either “flying dumptruck” or “psychodad”
:p
Haha. I looked through it and couldn’t figure it out….but it’s quite possible either of those set it off.
lol I do remember being censored. And earlier this year before that, there was somebody had who disagreed with me on a couple of my comments and called himself liquida– leaving off the -ets, as a protest. If I remember right, it was tongue in cheek and the tone of the reply and whole discussion was humorous, so at the time I didn’t mind and thought it was funny myself, but I understand some would be offended, especially since there are kids on this site, so I support the censors, imperfect though they may be.
I also wanted to say to Jenny Schipper, although Jessicah did have a bit of bad luck here and there, but the Olympics and… Read more »
Hey LiquidAssets
Thanks so much for your VERY kind words re Jess and her swim career.
She made me so proud with her whole attitude with swimming. Always being outshone by the media savvy swimmers .. she said she didn’t swim for the accolades, she swam because she loved to race, and she loved to win .. and she did both so beautifully.
I miss her swimming career terribly, but she is very happy with her little Robert and i have some awesome memories of the fabulous journey we had over her ten year international career.
very proud Mum 🙂 Thanks again
One of the greatest female flyers ever. It’s a pity her peak years were in between the Olympics. One of the very few female flyers in the past 30 years who were world’s #1 in both distances in major years (where Olympics or LCM Worlds were held). Just like Crocker, Schipper was never comfortable wearing LZR in 1998 and she publicly said so, and wasnt much helped by the shiny suit as much as it did to her closest competitors.
In fact, since the original Madam Butterfly top the 100/200 fly world rankings in 1984, (Ms. Meagher lost the 100 fly in 1986 worlds to the two german Otto and Gressler) there have been exactly only 3 swimmers who’s done… Read more »
Thanks ASWIMFAN for your very kind words re Jess and her achievements. Although i might be considered biased (being her Mum) i am in awe of her achievements and her successes. I also STILL feel lamented over the World Championships 2005 Montreal. Jess was only 18 and it would have been her FIRST world record but the powers that were failed her dismally. She had a fabulous career (though somewhat “jinxed” in several places) but i could not be prouder of her and seriously impressed with her accomplishments and to think she was on the Australian team for over 10 years without a break and has retired still holding the Commonwealth and Australian records in both the 100 & 200… Read more »
Schipper, who got pregnant during the Olympic Games…
That’s may be TMI.
floppy – I must be missing something. Those, in fact, were her exact words in describing it, and it is precisely what happened. So, if she’s not offended by it, why are you??
LOL .. it was the 2nd week after the swimming was done and dusted. A quick trip to Paris on a day off and voila .. little Robert come into being 🙂