Five-time Olympic champion Peirsol retires

AUSTIN, Texas — Aaron Peirsol, a five-time Olympic swim champion who still owns world records in the 100- and 200-metre backstroke, has retired from competitive swimming.Peirsol told the Austin American-Statesman, his hometown newspaper, that he will not compete at next year's London Olympics, drying off at age 27."Retiring is such a strange word. I'm 27 years old. I've still got stuff to do," Peirsol told the newspaper. "But to do this right, you have got to give it 110 percent. I can't give it 110 percent any more."Peirsol has applied for political science graduate studies at the University of Texas, where he was a collegiate swim star."I've got time to kill," he said. "I want to take advantage of it."Peirsol won three gold medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics and took the 100 backstroke gold at Beijing as well as a relay gold, but struggled when it came time to prepare for London."It was hard for me to reset, to find something worth going for the next year," he said. "Things outside of the sport started to interest me. I felt like I had started to move on." Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

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