Joseph Schooling’s Rise, Retirement, and Reflections on Life After Gold

Joseph Schooling, Singapore’s first and only Olympic gold medalist, is slightly embarrassed by a cardboard cutout of himself perched near the door of his parents’ office. The standee, designed for a meet-and-greet session in 2015, shows a young Schooling, then a rising swimming star, grinning ear to ear, frozen in time.

He keeps pestering his mum to get rid of it, he says, but she won’t budge. Can you really blame her for wanting to keep around this life-sized memento of a time when her son seemed on top of the world?

A year after his mother brought the cardboard Jo home, Schooling would make history at age 21 at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, besting American swimming legend Michael Phelps at the 100-m butterfly. Phelps, who was competing in the last Olympic individual event of his career, shared silver with South Africa’s Chad le Clos and Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh in a three-way tie three-fourths of a second behind Schooling, who set an Olympic record. Cseh described it as “the craziest race maybe in swimming history.”

Schooling was already famous in his Southeast Asian homeland of 6 million people, but now he was a national hero.

“Dad used to have a saying: the blind man doesn’t fear the tiger,” Schooling, who turned 29 in June, told TIME in an extended interview earlier this year. “And I didn’t really understand the magnitude or the steepness of the competition,” he said, reminiscing about the Olympics and his late father’s wise words, as he sat surrounded by childhood photos in his parents’ old office.

When Schooling returned to Singapore in the summer of 2016, crowds lined the streets and cheered as he waved from an open-top bus on a victory parade; lawmakers gave him a standing ovation in parliament; and parents across the city-state signed their kids up for swimming lessons, no doubt fueled by dreams of cultivating the next Olympic champions.

But less than a decade later, Schooling is done with racing. He didn’t compete in Paris, announcing his retirement just months before the Games in an emotional press conference. “To say this is a bittersweet moment doesn’t really do this moment justice,” he said.

Those who had been following Schooling’s swimming career would say they saw it coming: his meteoric rise gave way to years of lackluster results and public disappointment. But his experience also sheds light on the immense pressure many elite athletes face, compounded by a stigma surrounding mental health support in the industry.

“I feel like professional sport is hyper focused on who is the big item at that moment. And it operates a little like a conveyor belt where the athlete is in the spotlight, and then they just fall off a cliff and disappear from view, like they’re a commodity that is no longer useful,” sport psychologist Daniel Zimet tells TIME. “[Schooling’s] experience post the Olympics, I think, is a great example of how fragile being at the top of the mountain can be, and how fickle people’s grace can become.”

“You will always be the greatest joy in my memories, and also the reason why I stay awake sometimes and worry,” Schooling’s mother wrote in an open letter published in Singapore’s national newspaper after his retirement announcement.

In the races leading up to the 2016 Olympics, buzz had been building around Schooling, who had been chipping away at his timing and venturing into uncharted waters: he took home Singapore’s first swimming medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, broke a 32-year drought for a men’s swimming gold at the Asian Games in Incheon later that year, and won a bronze medal at the 2015 World Aquatics championship in Kazan—yet another first for the country.

But after Schooling’s success in the pool in Rio, something had shifted.

Still giddy from his whirlwind gold-medal performance, Schooling, then an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin, dove headfirst into training for collegiate competition. But at the 2017 NCAA swimming tournament, right before Schooling was set to walk out to the pool, he battled a crippling bout of what he thought were pre-race jitters; the team doctor would tell him later that it was a panic attack. He failed to defend the butterfly titles he had held for the previous two years, and he knew the confidence that had fuelled his rise was quickly being whittled down.

“You understand that the stakes are much higher,” he recalls now. “After winning basically every single race the previous two years, losing after the Olympics is just not an option.”

While there were still bright spots and medals along the way, Schooling’s performance over the next several years was shaky. He set a new record at the 2018 Asian Games, then failed to make the semifinals at the 2019 FINA World Championships; later that year he won six medals across six events at the Southeast Asian Games, but, in 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics, he finished last in his heat for the 100-m butterfly. In March 2023, he pulled out of the Southeast Asian Games in Cambodia, saying that he was “not at the level at which I hold myself to perform.” A few months later, he failed to make the cut to compete at the Asian Games in Hangzhou.

On top of everything he was feeling internally, Schooling also faced constant scrutiny from a public that had tasted the glory he could offer but wasn’t satisfied without more. When Schooling gained weight, he was swarmed with body shaming comments on social media. And when he failed to make the Olympic semifinals in Tokyo, he was met with a barrage of denigration.

“You not only have the expectations of yourself, but you have the expectations of the people around you, the media, the country, and all these eyeballs, where previously they weren’t even in existence,” he reflects.

Schooling made local headlines in 2022 after confessing to using cannabis while in Vietnam, though he was let go with a warning and maintains that the incident was a one-off mistake. In a public apology, Schooling attributed his drug use to “a very tough period of my life.” His father, who was battling liver cancer, had died the previous year.

This blemish on his squeaky clean image stirred much pearl-clutching through the city-state, notorious for its draconian anti-drug stance. Schooling was met with a mixed outpouring of sympathy and condemnation. In an open letter in the national newspaper, a sports editor offered stern encouragement, with a tinge of chiding over poor choices. “You’ve made us think about a lot of things this week. About champions and sainthood, drugs and humanness, errors and preachiness,” goes the letter’s last paragraph. “About why societies elevate athletes and who’s there to guide them. We’re all trying to learn and so, hopefully, will you.”

While Schooling’s retirement at age 28 is earlier than some other elite swimmers who have continued into their 30s, he’s far from the only young professional athlete to make the decision to cut short their career.

In April, 29-year-old Japanese badminton player Momota Kento announced that he was retiring from international competition. After nearly losing his life in a car accident in 2020, the former world champion never found the way back to his peak. “I tried so many things but I just couldn’t close the emotional, physical gap between who I used to be and who I am. I felt I couldn’t become world No. 1 again,” he said. And in May, two-time world champion figure skater Uno Shoma retired at age 26 because he felt “lonely,” he said, after the departure of his longtime rink rival, Hanyu Yuzuru, who had hung up his skates two years earlier. Even Phelps announced his retirement at 27 after the 2012 Olympics, saying later that he “was ready to move on”—though he changed his mind in 2013 and ultimately quit competitive swimming after winning five more gold medals as well as the silver behind Schooling at the 2016 Olympics.

The gravity of such decisions, particularly for athletes who have made it to the very top of their field, is difficult for most people to comprehend, says Zimet, the sport psychologist. “There’s a real sense of ‘Have I reached the apex of my life? Will I ever have an experience like this again? Or is it all downhill from here?’” Zimet explains. “To be [their age] and feel like your life’s greatest achievement is now behind you and you’ll never have that feeling again—it’s tough.”

The rigors of an athletic career can prove backbreaking from an early age, where the professionalization of youth sport is accompanied by high training volume and pressure. In the U.S., 70% of kids below the age of 13 drop out of organized sport, driven by factors like injury, a loss of enjoyment in the activity, and unattainable expectations from parents and coaches.

As adults, collegiate and professional athletes suffer disproportionately from psychological distress and sleep problems. Many turn to substance use—in 2009, Phelps famously was temporarily suspended by USA Swimming and dropped by sponsor Kellogg, for whom he had appeared on cereal boxes, after he was photographed apparently smoking marijuana—though experts caution that the habit often takes a toll on sleep quality, which can in turn detrimentally affect their mental well-being.

Sports organizations have been increasingly focused on mental health support for athletes. The NCAA, NFL, and NBA now mandate mental health services to be accessible to their athletes, while the International Olympic Committee has in recent years honed its emphasis on athletes’ mental well-being, acknowledging that “our mental health is irrefutably intertwined with our overall health, yet in sport it is often overlooked.”

In a hopeful trend, more top athletes, too, are breaking the longstanding taboo. Phelps has spoken openly about his struggles with anxiety and depression, and lauded fellow athletes who are doing the same, such as tennis player Naomi Osaka. The four-time Grand Slam champion withdrew from the French Open in 2021 after being fined for declining to attend press conferences, citing her mental health.

“In any other line of work, you would be forgiven for taking a personal day here and there, so long as it’s not habitual. You wouldn’t have to divulge your most personal symptoms to your employer,” she wrote in a cover story essay for TIME after her French Open withdrawal. Later that year, when American gymnast Simone Biles pulled out of some of her events at the Tokyo Olympics because of the “twisties,” Biles credited Osaka’s words of encouragement: “I know she knows exactly the feeling that I was going through, so it’s nice to relate to somebody on that high level.”

After a two-year hiatus, Biles returned in 2023, won golds at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, and became the most decorated gymnast in history. Her momentum continued into 2024, taking the all-around gold at the Core Hydration Classic in May before winning two individual golds, one team gold, and a silver individual medal at the Paris Olympics, during which she pointedly told the public and press to stop rushing to ask medalists “what’s next?”

The fact that athletes can take a break and come back stronger shows that rest does work. And Schooling can only wonder if he could have gone on to improve his personal best set in Rio—which was 0.57 seconds behind the world record then held by Phelps—had he learned how to properly take a break. “In hindsight,” he says, “I would have taken a bit more time off [after the 2016 Olympics] to just separate from swimming. Give me two, three months, completely off, not have to worry about coming to practice, not feel like it’s a chore … I actually to this day believe that, had I walked [that] path, I would have gotten that world record.”

“The body does need a certain measure of rest, and just training physically in and of itself is not enough to be able to win at the highest possible levels. You need to have the right mindset, you need proper rest,” says Zimet. “There’s more to it than just training 12 hours a day physically.”

After spending years on a Sisyphean mission to reascend to the peak, Schooling would never again clock his record Olympic timing, which U.S. swimmer Caeleb Dressel later broke. Schooling said in his retirement press conference in April that his performance eventually dimmed because of “complacency.” But speaking to TIME a month later, he attributed it to getting burned out. “You’re pushing yourself day in and day out to the brim,” he says. “I wanted to travel. I wanted to do something else that was not swimming.”

About a year ago, Schooling’s well-oiled routine started to creak. He no longer enjoyed waking up early for morning practice, or plunging into a cold pool at 5:30 in the morning. “I thought I’d sleep it off and one day just wake up and be magically in love with swimming again,” he says. “And that wasn’t the case.”

The feelings came as he was serving two years of military service—a mandatory rite of passage for men in Singapore—which had taken a toll on his training. After enlisting in January 2022, Schooling revealed to the national newspaper in April that year that he had briefly decided to retire the previous month—“due to existential circumstances”—before taking it back.

Schooling confided in his best friend, Teo Zhen Ren, whom he describes as his “sounding board.” The pair met while swimming, first as kids in the same country club and later for the national team and their respective universities. While Schooling represented the University of Texas at Austin, Teo swam for Santa Monica College in California. They would trade friendly banter, compare their swim times, and give each other reality checks.

As Schooling unraveled his feelings of ennui, over dinners and on the golf course, Teo understood exactly what he was saying, having retired in much quieter fashion before Schooling. (After years of breaking national records and having battled a stubborn shoulder injury, Teo swam his last race for Singapore in 2015 and competed in the NCAA for another two years before calling it quits.)

Teo tells TIME from London, where he’s currently doing an MBA, that his decision to retire came after “realizing that there’s so much more to life than just one thing that you do.” And it “really feels like there’s only one thing that you do for that 15 to 20 years when you swim competitively.”

With training taking up so much of an elite athlete’s time, there’s little opportunity for them to pursue other ambitions outside of their sport. As a result, upon retirement elite athletes often find themselves with little work experience that makes them competitive on conventional job markets—on top of a sense of loss of their identity.

“I’ve worked with a lot of post-career athletes, who feel like they’ve been abandoned by their sport and their fans after they no longer serve a purpose,” says Zimet, the sport psychologist.

Teo says he saw a renewed energy in Schooling when he talked about his projects outside of his athletic career, from building a swim school in Singapore to starting a venture capital firm with a couple of partners. Teo says it gave him “a lot of comfort” that Schooling had plans for what to do next. But, Teo adds, “I think everyone who dedicates their life for many years to something and suddenly stops doing it, no matter how well you prepare for it, it will be hard. So I’m not saying it will be easy for Joseph as well.”

“That was what I spent most of my time reflecting on or internalizing, knowing that my worth isn’t pegged to swimming,” Schooling tells TIME. It’s also an attitude that he’s taken into his post-retirement coaching and investing endeavors. “These are all ventures and these are all pathways which somehow deep down inside me I know that I need to be on,” he says. “How can I use my experiences and help that person, help the younger pipeline, youth athletes achieve greater heights than I did? … We want to provide them the platform and give them the tools in order to be the best versions of themselves.” 

Schooling’s retirement announcement in April ushered in a flood of tributes, hailing his historic feat that continues to inspire Singaporeans from all walks of life.

In a phone call with TIME from Paris, where he was training ahead of the 2024 Olympics, swimmer Jonathan Tan reminisced about watching Schooling’s famed race eight years ago. “That was a time when we realized that it was actually possible for someone from Singapore to win an Olympic gold medal.”

Inch Chua, a Singaporean singer-songwriter, tells TIME that she found resonance in Schooling’s resilience at the highest level. “People have let him down a lot,” she says. “It really takes a very powerful dreamer first and foremost, and then a really strong, passionate, and committed person to get there,” she adds.

“Ain’t it funny, when you got it all / the crowd is waiting for you to fall,” goes a song Chua wrote about Schooling in 2022, as his cannabis incident dominated headlines. “Break your back, no time for brooding / I wanna be like Joseph Schooling.”