Australia’s Geoff Huegill has announced his retirement again, after a comeback bid that left him short of a second Olympic team in 2012.
Still, it would be hard to call his comeback a “failure,” given both the intermediate success he had in the pool, and the seeming transformation of his life.
In 2011, Huegill finaled at the World Championships in the 100 fly, and took the Commonwealth Games title in the same event in 2010. All signs pointed toward him being the Aussies’ butterfly piece for the Olympics, but it was not to be: he ended up missing the team by half-a-second.
In 2006, after his first retriement, he struggled, having admitted to both drug usage and severe depression. Then, in 2007, he met Sara Hills, his wife and the woman with whom he gave birth to a daughter in January. Huegill seems a changed man, having become one of the most well-liked and most positive members of the Australian team, despite struggling so much with depression.
“This time it’s definitely it,” Huegill said of whether another comeback was possible. ” I’ve retired once before, and a lot of people have reminded me about that, but this is it. I’ll keep swimming because I love the sport, but my serious racing days are over.”
Swimming Australia head coachLeigh Nugent spoke glowingly of Huegill as well. “He always represented Australia with passion and pride and to see him at his second Olympics in Athens, and then return to our team some six years later for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi was a remarkable achievement.
The man nicknamed “Skippy,” now 33, has a pair of Olympic medals from his very first games in 2000: won in front of a home Sydney crowd. There, he took bronze in the 100 fly and a silver as a part of the Australian 400 medley relay.