Former Commonwealth champion Alys Thomas says she has been advised to end her career immediately to avoid possible permanent damage to her wrist.
Thomas, 31, won gold for Wales in the women’s 200m butterfly at the 2018 Games before reaching the Olympic final in Tokyo last year.
Her wrist problems began with a cartilage tear over a decade ago, and have left her with “the arthritis of a 60-year-old”.
“It’s a lot to take in,” said Thomas.
“It’s a lot to get my head around. As an athlete, I want to carry on.
“I said to the consultant: ‘What can you do for me in order for me to just stay in the water and stay competitive and train the way I want to and need to?’ Unfortunately there was nothing they were able to do.”
Thomas was planning to compete at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
But she said: “It was set out to me that the state of my joint and my wrist was not good and if I were to continue loading the joint and the daily grind of training that potentially I would lose function in my hand and in my wrist.”
Winning Commonwealth gold was a breakthrough moment for Thomas – her Games record of two minutes 5.45 seconds in the women’s final catapulted her into the elite.
She finished seventh at last year’s Olympics but has now revealed she had been managing the pain in her right wrist for a decade.
Thomas had torn the cartilage before her first Commonwealths – Delhi 2010 – but hoped surgery would fix it.
Yet the problem persisted, and Thomas said she has had to cope with the pain since – initially through steroid injections but more recently through tape and painkillers.
“Over the last two years or so it’s been more and more difficult to manage pain-wise,” she said.
“My tolerance levels are high on the whole but it’s getting more and more difficult to get what I need to do in training in order to stay competitive within the sport.
