Annie Lazor, the Tokyo Olympic 200m breaststroke bronze medalist, is leaving competitive swimming after this week’s U.S. Championships to become a coach.
The University of Florida announced on June 12 that Lazor, 28, joined its staff as an assistant coach.
“I can’t think of a better way to make my transition from one side of the pool deck to the other,” she said, according to a press release then.
At that time, Lazor was undecided on how much longer she would compete. “Focused on trials and then will figure it out from there,” a UF spokesperson said June 12.
At this week’s nationals, Lazor finished third in the 200m breast and sixth in the 100m breast, the latter being her final race. The top two in each made the team for July’s world championships in Fukuoka, Japan.
Lazor had quit swimming after missing the 2016 Olympic team in both breaststrokes, graduated from Auburn and took an operations internship in the Cal-Berkeley athletic department.
She returned to the pool after a year away and later finished 2019 ranked Nos. 2 and 3 in the world in the 100m and 200m breast after never previously ranking in the top 10.
In 2021, Lazor made her first Olympic team in her third trials. She became the oldest American woman to qualify for her first Olympic team in the pool in 17 years.
Then in Tokyo, she earned 200m breast bronze, edging Russian Yevgeniya Chikunova for the last medal by four hundredths of a second.
Last year, Lazor made the U.S. team for the world championships in the 100m breast but not the 200m breast. At worlds in Budapest, she was disqualified for illegal leg movement with her kick in the semifinals.