{"id":47489,"date":"2026-09-23T05:16:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T05:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/tatjana-smith-south-african-swimmer-comes-out-of-retirement\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T05:16:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T05:16:46","slug":"tatjana-smith-south-african-swimmer-comes-out-of-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/tatjana-smith-south-african-swimmer-comes-out-of-retirement\/","title":{"rendered":"Tatjana Smith: South African swimmer comes out of retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having made her decision to come out of retirement, Smith now wants to freshen things up and &#8220;try something new&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That means a change to the 50m breaststroke, an event which has just been added to the Olympic schedule for the first time ahead of the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I thought, &#8216;Why don&#8217;t I try? Why don&#8217;t I give myself that challenge? Reinvent myself&#8217;,&#8221; said Smith.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I always try and describe it to someone that maybe doesn&#8217;t understand swimming; it&#8217;s like a 400m runner and a 100m [runner]. It&#8217;s two different body types, two different trainings, and that&#8217;s where I&#8217;m going.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It means she has more than halved her training volume, with three sessions a week instead of eight &#8211; a change she believes will help her retain her love for her sport and live a more balanced life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I feel like I&#8217;m being so lazy because I used to do 12km per day and now the focus is on taking time to be as explosive as possible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Now I&#8217;m doing 12km over a whole week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I have 20 years of endurance in my pocket, but I can definitely see I don&#8217;t have those fast twitch [muscle] fibres. It&#8217;s a whole different way of teaching my body how to swim.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Those initial 20 years in the pool left Smith feeling burned out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Now she says she has earned the right to do things on her terms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Swimming was an opportunity given to me by my parents and I believe I took it on full heartedly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But, for the first time, it&#8217;s my decision whether I want to come back. I&#8217;m choosing swimming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve achieved way more than I ever dreamed in my whole life, so I have nothing to prove.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/olympics\/articles\/ck8d388rmdvqo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having made her decision to come out of retirement, Smith now wants to freshen things up and &#8220;try something new&#8221;. That means a change to the 50m breaststroke, an event which has just been added to the Olympic schedule for the first time ahead of the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. &#8220;I thought, &#8216;Why don&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47491,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47489\/revisions\/47491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}