Blake Pieroni Describes His Journey From Retirement Back To The Pool

During the seven months in which two-time Olympic gold medalist Blake Pieroni was a retired man, he lived the life of an average Joe.

Every day, Pieroni worked his 9-5 job in private equity at a real estate company. He developed the new hobby of rock climbing, and he’d go to the rock climbing gym near his office with his coworkers two to three times a week. Since he lifted weights regularly, he was still able to maintain shape in retirement.

But even though Pieroni loved his job and had plenty of things to do in his free time, there came a point where he started to miss his old life. And in March 2023, he decided to come back to swimming.

“As time went on, I just really wanted to get back and train again,” Pieroni told SwimSwam. “I don’t really miss waking up at 4:45 in the morning for practice, but I miss racing and I miss the day in and day out of training.”

“I just wanted to be around a great group of guys that are trying to do their best, and I really love it. I miss seeing a lot of my different friends that don’t train in Bloomington—I used to be able to see them at different meets and team trips.”

Following the NCAA Championships in March, Pieroni asked his coach Corey Chitwood if he could come back and swim a few days a week at the University of Indiana—where he swam in college and trained as a pro. Chitwood was supportive, encouraging him to return.

When Pieroni initially announced his retirement in August 2022, he said that he “didn’t feel a burning passion to be the very best [he could] be”.  So while he decided to swim again, he wasn’t doing super intense training of any sort—he’s still working at his job full time and only trains four to five times a week (75 minutes per session).

In addition, Pieroni isn’t a fan of how pro groups are built off of college teams in swimming. He previously said in an interview with SwimSwam that it was difficult to be a pro training with a college team, and his opinions haven’t changed since then.

“I just don’t think it’s the best system—can you imagine someone going into the NBA and training with their college basketball team?” Pieroni said. “But I don’t think we have a better solution, as pro satellite teams have been created in the past and they weren’t successful.”

That being said, Pieroni is happy with his recent performances in swimming. He last competed at the Indy Spring Cup this May, where he went 22.80 in the 50 free and 49.65 in the 100 free. In the future, he plans on going to the Pro Championships this July and says he will “probably” swim at Olympic trials next summer.

Pieroni also says that he hasn’t been experiencing any issues following his knee surgery in May 2022.

“I haven’t had any knee pain, which is the best-case scenario,” Pieroni said. “A lot of people have had knee surgeries and have a lot of complications after their first one. So far, I’ve been pretty lucky to not have any issues.”

In the meantime, Pieroni returned to the biggest stage of swimming as a spectator when he was in attendance at the 2023 U.S. National Championships on Friday night. There, he was honored alongside Jacoby Pebley, Pace Clark, and Zane Grothe with gold medals for their efforts on Team USA’s 4×200 freestyle relay at the 2016 Short Course World Championships.

Pieroni doesn’t follow swimming in-depth anymore, but will still pay attention to the results of big meets like Nationals. He says that the state of the mens’ 100 free, the event that he was best known for in long course, in the United States was “healthy”. In that event, the top four swimmers (Jack Alexy, Chris Guiliano, Destin Lasco, and Matt King) had all never qualified for a major senior international team before.

Particularly, Pieroni was impressed by the results of Ryan Held and was glad to see him going 47-point.

“It’s funny because people start worrying that the whole 2021 Olympic relay didn’t qualify for Worlds, but the U.S. is so deep that it’s not going to be an issue,” Pieroni said.

Even though Pieroni is only cheering on his teammates from the stands or at home at big meets like Nationals now, expect him to be in the water the next time a major domestic meet rolls around.