Emma McKeon's life in pictures: The humble history maker
Emma McKeon has called time on her illustrious sporting career.
The champion swimmer is Australia's most decorated Olympian in history.
The Wollongong export has 14 Olympic medals to her name, six of them gold.
Here, we look back at the life of the humble superfish who took breaking records in her stride.
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McKeon took to swimming at an early age. It's in her blood.
Both her parents were elite swimmers.
Her father, Ron, competed at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics. He also won four Commonwealth Games gold medals.
Her mother Susie swam at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane 1982.
Growing up, McKeon spent a lot of her time in the water.
And with her parents running a swimming school in Wollongong, a coastal city south of Sydney, it was near impossible to avoid a beach or a pool.
In the early days of her career, her father Ron coached both Emma and her brother David.
During their teenage years, both siblings decided to move to Queensland to continue training.
Ron gave them his full support.
"I loved having my dad as my coach, but he also wanted the both of us to know what it was like to have a coach that wasn't your dad. He wanted to let us have that opportunity," McKeontold Swimming World in 2021.
"It was hard because it was just what I was so used to, but it was also good for me to grow and also work harder."
McKeon was just 16 when she competed at the 2010 Youth Olympics in Singapore.
Her young talent shone.
At the end of the meet she had one gold, one silver and two bronze medals.
Two years later the outcome was starkly different.
McKeon narrowly missed Olympic selection. She all but quit.
"I was really upset when I missed that team – obviously because my brother made it, and our other training partner, Jarrod Poort, he made it as well in the 1500," she said in 2021.
"I was really upset after that, and then I actually stopped swimming not long after the Trials. I knew I wanted to go to the Olympics, but I didn't want to wait another four years, so I was like, 'I'll just stop.'"
McKeon's parents intervened.
They spoke with eight-time Olympic medalist Susie O'Neill.
O'Neill was at a pool meet with other swimming champions of the sport when the McKeons approached her.
"And just at the end of it, her parents came and spoke to me because I knew them through Rob [Woodhouse] and they wanted me to talk to Emma because she was thinking about quitting swimming at the time," O'Neill said in 2021.
"For some reason she wasn't really enjoying it, I don't exactly know why and I was on the bus with her back to the hotel and chatting to her about it."
After their chat, O'Neill was unsure what McKeon's next move would be.
In fact, she thought McKeon would quit.
Though, it was the opposite. She returned to the pool and thrived.
It wasn't the last time O'Neill and McKeon would communicate.
"Susie O'Neill is my absolute hero," McKeon wrote.
"Even coming close to her achievements is hard to imagine, but I'm keeping her words in my head this week: long and strong, long and strong..."
They weren't the only words the Australian sporting legend shared with McKeon.
On the eve of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, O'Neill wrote to McKeon.
O'Neill shared that 20 years earlier she had the backing of McKeon's grandparents as she won gold in Atlanta.
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