[ PHOTO COURTESY FINIS ]
Lia Neal Announces Retirement from Swimming, Reflects on Her Significant Impact BY DAVID RIEDER
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ia Neal has been making history for almost a decade, as the second African American female swimmer to qualify for a U.S. Olympic team and win an Olympic medal and the first to accomplish those feats twice. Neal has also swum at three World Championships, winning two relay gold medals in 2017. But after a decade among the elite sprinters in the United States, Neal has decided to retire from competitive swimming. Neal told Swimming World that when the country shut down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, she left her training base in San Diego and returned home to New York. At first, she tried to stay in shape, hoping that life would return to normal relatively quickly and the 2020 Olympic Trials would go on as planned. “But the pandemic was getting worse, and I realized we weren’t getting back in anytime soon,” Neal said. “It kind of made me realize that with the time and space that we all had to be more introspective, that I’m totally fine being done. There wasn’t a dire need to get back in and race anytime soon.” As Neal reflected on her decision and her swimming career, she explained that the pandemic-induced layoff allowed her to step back from the grueling, four-year cycle of swimming that stressed the Olympics above all else. Neal gained a different and broader perspective on swimming and life, 8
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which helped her come to her decision. “I had been feeling kind of on the outs with swimming for a few years, but I think in swimming, and being an athlete, we’re trained to always persevere,” Neal said. “That mentality kept me in this sport a little bit longer, and I didn’t realize that I had outgrown the sport at a certain point.” However, in September, Neal did return to the pool, albeit temporarily. Shortly before the International Swimming League began its second season, Olympic legend and Cali Condors general manager Jason Lezak contacted Neal about signing with his team when he needed more sprinters on his roster. Neal told Lezak that she had not been training, but Lezak asked if Neal could get in shape as quickly as possible. Neal agreed. “I had three and a half weeks after not swimming for six months to get back into racing shape. I let him know the physical state I was in, and he was OK with it,” Neal said. “I kind of took it as an opportunity to give to myself and use it as one last trial to see if what I had been feeling about being done with swimming was going to be validated because I loved ISL so much the last season.” Because of the abbreviated timeline, Neal eschewed building up her aerobic base and focused only on sprinting before heading to Budapest, where the entirety of the 2020 ISL
