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Therese Alshammar To Bring Long Haul Of Illustrious Race Days To An End Next Week
- Updated: October 26, 2016
Therese Alshammar is to pull the plug on her long and illustrious racing career at 39. The Swedish swimmer, at Sydney 2000 double Olympic silver sprint medallist and at Shanghai 2011 the oldest world champion among women in history with victory in the 50m freestyle, has a comeback to her name, though she handled the birth of her first child more like a short break in the life of an athlete for life.
Alshammar tells SVT Sport today: “My body can not handle the load required to perform at the level I want to do.”
That is the very reason she gave when asked by this author back in 2011 when she would know it was time to move on: “As long as I am enjoying it and my body tells me I can do the work to make it worthwhile and be happy about what I am achieving, I will continue to swim. When I can’t say that anymore, then maybe it will be time.”
The time has come. She tells SVT Sport that she had “an overall sense and feeling for the situation.
“I have had problems with injuries to and from the last two years, and have not been able to do what I wanted to do for swimming.”
Therese Alshammar by Patrick B. Kraemer, with one of her 25 European titles, this one gold in the 50 free at the Budapest 2010 long-course titles – by Patrick B. Kraemer
In Rio at the 2016 Olympic Games, her sixth Games, Alshammar made the semis of the 50m freestyle. It would be her last race for Sweden. She will race for one last time in Stockholm next week and is happy now to look back on one of the longest international careers in the history of swimming – and one stacked with honour.
She speaks of her love of swimming when she tells STV:
“Swimming is fantastic as a form of exercise and I hope I will always apply it. After [the last race next week] I will not have the same strict focus and have no intention to qualify for the [Sweden team for international duty]. I’ll swim for the fun of it and to feel good, not to push my body to the max.”
Alshammar’s husband Johan Wallberg, with whom she has a son, will take up the head coach job full time at the Stockholm excellence centre next January. Alshammar will be on the deck, helping the next wave achieve its dreams in the pool. She tells STV:
“It is something that comes naturally … our son is already swimming and it’s great to train him and other young people.”
Therese Alshammar with son Fred as she made her way back to full training in 2014 – by Patrick B. Kraemer
Alshammar retires with 25 European titles, 12 World titles (two of them long-course), two Olympic silvers and a bronze at the helm of 72 international podium places since her first honours for Sweden at the 1997 European Championships in Seville.
In 2011, Alshammar put a twist in the tale of Piaf when she said that while there were many things on her list of things that she could have done differently down the length of her long international senior race career, she would actually change nothing.
“I would change so many things that you won’t have space [to publish them]. I don’t think I would change anything if I could because everything I did has made me into the person I am today. If you’re willing, you can learn from your biggest mistakes, so it has been a journey and it has been fun.”
There had been highs and lows but since accepting her first selection for Sweden, Alshammar had never wavered in her love of the sport:
“I never thought of walking away – I have done other things, I have trained less and focused more on other parts of my life than the swimming part, but I never really thought I’ve had enough.”
Knocked by injury in 2012, Alshammar started her Olympic career at Atlanta 1996 and ended it 20 years later at Rio 2016. In the late 1990s, she had “Diva” tattoed on her lower back to remind her to work hard. Looking back in 2011, she said:
“When I was a bit younger I was a bit of a diva, because I didn’t train so hard and didn’t put in the effort. I made the tattoo to remind me that my previous ways weren’t so efficient and successful, and also as a tribute to women.”
Some Highlights From The Archive
Day 8 finals, Oriental Sports Center, Shanghai – Women’s 50m freestyle
Contemporary notes
Therese Alshammar – technical brilliance on her way to the 50m freestyle world title in 2011 – by Patrick B. Kraemer
Therese Alshammar, 26 days shy of her 34th birthday, became the oldest world swimming champion in the history of women’s swimming with a 24.14sec display of technical brilliance build over years of honing and correcting on a trajectory to that elusive place that the Swedish sprinter says does not exist: perfection.
Off her blocks and into her stroke in one fluid movement, Alshammar returned to that place of technical superiority she had known more than a decade ago on her way to two silver medals at Sydney 2000: it looked like she was swimming in a wind tunnel of the kind you see in car tests, turbulence-free streamlining the aim.
And look where that took her to: the 24.13 world record of Inge de Bruijn (NED) at Sydney 2000, when Alshammar was closest to the born-again Dutch diva, remains the best textile-suit time there ever was, though De Bruijn wore a bodysuit. Alshammar is the best there has ever been in the cut of suit now allowed under rules that have breathed new life into a sport that was drowning in shiny suits just two years ago.
Where Alshammar has struggled to hold back the pack in the closing metres in the past, today she held on, taking revenge on the Orange nemesis of her career, the silver going to Ranomi Kromowidjojo (NED), 24.27, and Dutch teammate and comeback mum Marleen Veldhuis, on 24.49. That confined Britain’s Fran Halsall, on 24.60, to the worst of places, fourth, for the second time this week.
All to the good if you want to be hungry for a home Olympic Games. Great news for Alshammar too. Where she had a world title in the past in a non-Olympic event, 50m butterfly, she now has one in an Olympic event.
Asked about the oldest title Alshammar smiled and said that she saw it as neither positive nor negative: “It’s just a fact”.
Therese Alshammar – by Patrick B. Kraemer
The result:
1. Theresa Alshammar, Sweden, 24.14. 2. Ranomi Kromowidjojo, Netherlands, 24.27. 3 Marleen Veldhuis, Netherlands, 24.49. 4. Francesca Halshall, Britain, 24.60. 5. Aliaksandra Herasimenia, Belarus, 24.65. 6. Jeanette Ottesen, Denmark, 24.67. 7. Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace, Bahamas, 24.79. 8. Jessica Hardy, United States, 24.87. Motherhood & Longevity
Therese Alshammar, by Patrick B. Kraemer
Alshammar spoke to …
