Before the 1972 Munich Olympics, Gould at one stage held every world freestyle record you could possibly break, including Dawn Fraser’s 100-metre milestone which had stood for 16 years.
After a lot of expectation, Gould managed a bronze in the 100 metres at Munich, but it was the other freestyle events where she left her mark.
Gould picked up three gold medals: The 200 metres freesyle, the 200 metre invidual medley and the 400 metre freestyle – all in world record time.
She was the first female to achieve that feat, and the first swimmer (male or female) to win Olympic medals in five different individual events at the same Games after also finishing second in the 800 metre freestyle.
At the end of the Munich Games, Gould had swum 12 races in eight days for a total of 4,200 metres of competitive swimming. Not surprisingly she was tired. Really tired.
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Once she recovered from the marathon schedule of Munich, Gould gradually lost the desire to keep up the gruelling training required to stay at the top and started to feel the pressure from the inevitable media exposure.
At the age of 17, she announced her retirement.
It would be more than two decades later before she returned to competitive swimming and in typical Shane Gould style broke records at Masters level including the 200 metre individual medley for the 45-49 age group which had stood since 1961.
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