At a glance…
- Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus has released her memoir, Relentless, reflecting on her extraordinary swimming career and her decision to retire at just 25.
- Ariarne reveals how concerns about her fertility, including her experience of freezing her eggs, influenced her decision to walk away from competitive swimming.
- In this conversation with The Australian Women’s Weekly, she opens up about her fiancé, Mac Powell, her family’s sacrifices and her dreams for the future.
For most of her life, Ariarne Titmus knew exactly what she wanted. And, more often than not, she got it. Olympic gold medals, world records and a place among Australia’s greatest sporting champions. The Tasmanian swimmer had an extraordinary ability to set her sights on a goal and pursue it relentlessly.
But while she could control almost every aspect of her training, there was one thing she couldn’t control: her fertility. After undergoing surgery for ovarian cysts, Ariarne found herself confronting questions about motherhood and her future that no amount of training could prepare her for.
And, as she reveals in her new memoir, the aptly named Relentless, those questions ultimately played a significant role in her decision to retire from competitive swimming at just 25.
“I think that if I hadn’t gone through what I did, maybe I would still be swimming,” she tells The Australian Women’s Weekly. “But at the end of the day, I was faced with a decision around what was most important to me in my life.”
Now, a year on from announcing her retirement, the 26-year-old has released a deeply personal account of her extraordinary life. And it’s about far more than swimming.
“It’s a little bit surreal,” she says of becoming a published author. “I never thought I’d ever become an author or ever have a memoir out there for everyone to read.”
But Ariarne was determined that if she was going to share her story, she was going to do it properly.
“I thought there was no point putting something out there if you’re not willing to really share it. So it is nerve-racking that I’m kind of putting my life out there for people to judge for themselves, but I hope people take a lot from it.”
Ariarne Titmus on her fertility
One of the most personal revelations in Relentless concerns Ariarne’s reproductive health, particularly her experience of freezing her eggs.
Having previously spoken publicly about undergoing surgery for ovarian cysts, Ariarne wanted to share what happened next and how it changed her perspective on life. In addition to including it in her memoir, she shared that she underwent surgery on her socials ahead of the Olympics.
“One thing I really wanted to include was what I was going through at that particular time in my life, around the time that I was freezing my eggs,” she explains. “Part of me thought, well, it’s just easier to keep it to myself, and no one will ever know.”
But she recognised that so many women go through similar experiences, often without the people around them knowing.
“There are so many women out there who go through this every day, and I wasn’t even trying to conceive babies. I was just trying to preserve my fertility.
“There are so many women who go through this in secret, and hardly anyone knows, and they’ve got to put a smile on their face and show up to work when they’re going through probably the trickiest point in their life.”
For Ariarne, there was another consideration: the demands of elite sport and the relatively short window in which many female swimmers reach their peak.
“It’s something that is really difficult for female athletes to deal with,” she says. “Especially in swimming, when we peak so young, is that our fertility directly crosses over with our peak athletic prowess.”
While some athletes may not be thinking about starting a family during their competitive careers, Ariarne’s experience brought those questions into sharp focus.
“For me, with what I went through with having those cysts removed from my ovary, it really struck me how much those emotions came to the surface for me, and that priority really pretty much overtook my life and ultimately why I decided to retire.”
She acknowledges that having already achieved her greatest sporting ambitions made the decision somewhat easier.
“Knowing what it feels like to be an Olympic champion, I think that really enabled the decision.”
But it wasn’t simply about choosing motherhood over a career. Ariarne is passionate about challenging the idea that women must choose one ambition at the expense of another.
“I really wanted to make it known that you can still have the ambition to be as successful as you can possibly be for yourself in your career, but you can still have the deepest desire to be a mother as well.”
It’s a sentiment that carries particular weight coming from a woman who has already achieved so much, yet has an entirely different set of dreams for her future.
Finding love at an unexpected time
Just as Ariarne was navigating these deeply personal questions, someone special came into her life. Her now-fiancé, Mac Powell, was introduced to her through an absolutely charming family connection. Her mum’s cousin set them up! And although neither was necessarily expecting to find love at that particular moment, they quickly realised they had something special.
“It’s something I’d never experienced before, and he hadn’t either,” she says of the certainty she felt about their relationship. Ariarne was busy juggling opportunities in broadcasting and contemplating her future in swimming.
“I didn’t really feel like it was the right time to meet someone. As it turned out, it was probably actually the perfect time.”
Just three months into their relationship, Ariarne learned that she had lower than optimal Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) levels, a measure used in assessing ovarian reserve. It meant having an incredibly serious conversation about their future together, much earlier than most new couples might anticipate. However, Mac had already been open about his desire to become a father, something Ariarne found particularly attractive.
“That’s the one thing I love about him the most. He profusely loves his family and would do anything for them,” she says.
Naturally, she was nervous about sharing her own fertility concerns. In her memoir, Ariarne writes candidly about feeling like a liability and worrying that she might let Mac down. But his reaction was everything she could have hoped for.
“He never, ever has felt that,” she tells me. “That was obviously my feeling, and I just feel so grateful that he never, he never, ever wavered in his thought process of ‘It’ll all be fine’.”
Having Mac by her side during such an uncertain period gave Ariarne enormous comfort.
“I just felt so grateful that I had met him before this because I just think it would have been so much harder to do on my own.”
And while Ariarne is adamant that she would have made the decision to retire regardless of her relationship, she acknowledges that meeting Mac helped her see a future beyond swimming.
“I could just see everything I’d ever wanted with him right there. And I wasn’t willing to put our relationship on the back burner, having achieved everything I did.”
Mac, however, was equally determined that the decision had to be hers.
“He was very upfront with me and was like, I cannot be a part of this decision. You cannot retire because of me.”
Ariarne appreciated his insistence, describing him as her “sidekick” through one of the toughest decisions of her life. There is, however, one thing she wishes had been different about the timing of their relationship: Mac never got to watch her race.
“But the one thing I am devastated about is that he never watched me race,” she says. “He never got to see [that side of me]. I was very different when I was so intense.”
And although he knows the woman she is today, Ariarne hopes her memoir will give him a deeper understanding of the athlete she once was. And he won’t find out until November, as she wouldn’t allow him to read it until it was all complete. Although they live together, so of course her fiancé heard some snippets.
“There are so many little bits in there that I’ve never told him, especially around my swimming career and how tough it was. So I’m looking forward to his reaction after reading that.”
Knowing when to walk away
Ariarne isn’t the first Australian sporting champion to retire at the height of her success and publish a memoir in her twenties.
Fellow sporting legend Ash Barty retired from tennis in 2022, while ranked world number one, at just 25 years old. And as Ariarne reveals in Relentless, she reached out to Ash when she was contemplating her own retirement.
“I knew she couldn’t make up my mind for me, but I wanted to know how she knew it was time, and how she was feeling after she had walked away from it all,” Ariarne writes.
Ash offered a piece of advice that struck a chord: “You’d rather people ask why you are retiring, not when you are retiring.”
For someone who had spent most of her life striving towards the next race, the next record and the next Olympic Games, stepping away was no small decision. But Ariarne says there was an unexpected sense of lightness as she began to accept that her competitive swimming career was coming to an end.
That feeling is reflected in the memoir itself. The early chapters move at a relentless pace, much like Ariarne’s career, filled with training, competitions and extraordinary achievements. But towards the end, the narrative begins to slow.
“I think that when I was making this decision around retirement, there was this sense of lightness and easygoingness, in a sense that I’d never felt before,” she explains.
“I just didn’t feel as much intensity in my life. My day-to-day wasn’t as rigorous, and I wasn’t on a mission every single day.”
And although Ariarne remains incredibly busy – she appeared in Nine’s SHARK!, covered the Commonwealth Games, and fronts 10’s What’s Up Down Under – she says her life now has a balance she never experienced as an athlete.
“One thing I’ve noticed since swimming is I feel my emotions so much deeper because I actually allow myself to,” she says. “When I was swimming, I was so focused on just what was ahead the next day, but you really don’t allow yourself a second to relax.”
It’s a remarkable admission from someone who spent so many years displaying such extraordinary mental fortitude and earned the title of “The Terminator” (she’s actually a real softie). For Ariarne, retirement hasn’t meant losing her ambition; she just now has the freedom to direct it elsewhere.
The sacrifices that made a champion
Of course, Ariarne’s success was never hers alone. Throughout Relentless, she pays tribute to her parents, Robyn and Steve, whose sacrifices helped transform a young Tasmanian swimmer with big dreams into an Olympic champion.
When Ariarne was just 14, the family made the enormous decision to relocate from Tasmania to Queensland to support her swimming career. But the move wasn’t straightforward. While Ariarne and her mother settled into life in Brisbane, her father remained in Tasmania for months, applying for jobs and preparing the family home for the move. At the time, Ariarne was too young to fully appreciate the emotional toll the separation took on her parents. It’s only now, as an adult and in a relationship herself, that she truly understands.
“I was living this sort of double life in Brisbane and going to a top girls’ school, but living in this tiny apartment, with minimal furniture, and my dad staying back in Tassie, constantly applying for jobs and packing up the house and being on his own.”
Looking back, she recognises just how difficult those months must have been.
“I know now how tough it was. And I think it was really important to recognise that in the book.”
Her gratitude is palpable.
“I will owe them for the rest of my life,” she says. “They set the example for me for what it is to be a wonderful mum and dad, and I’ll never, ever be able to repay them because, hand on heart, if we hadn’t moved, I don’t think I would have ever had the success that I did have.”
It’s an example Ariarne hopes to carry into her own future family. Both her parents were career-driven and worked hard to provide for their daughters. And Ariarne wants her future children to see that same determination in her.
“You can be a wonderful mum, but you can also set a great example and show them that hard work pays off.”
Life after Olympic gold
Although Ariarne may have retired from swimming, she certainly hasn’t retired from working.
Over the past two years, she’s been building a career in broadcasting, taking on presenting and commentary opportunities and developing skills beyond the pool. And she’s determined to be recognised for her abilities rather than simply her famous name.
“I’ve really tried to hone my skill set and learn from people around me and give myself an opportunity to be chosen for roles, not just because of who I am and my name, but because I’m actually a formidable broadcaster.”
Her long-term ambition is to establish herself as a presenter and commentator across a range of subjects, not just swimming. But unlike the Ariarne who once measured her days in training sessions and fractions of a second, she’s also learning that she doesn’t have to fill every moment.
“I’m okay if it’s not as hustle and bustle as what it’s been,” she says. It’s a significant shift for someone who describes herself as having been born with a relentless mindset. Indeed, that determination is what inspired the title of her memoir.
“I was relentless in my pursuit to achieve what I wanted to achieve,” she says.
And while Ariarne has never struggled with self-belief in the pool, she hopes her story will encourage others, particularly young people, to have confidence in their own abilities.
“I want young people to read that and recognise it in themselves, that they can believe in themselves and they can believe in their goals and not limit themselves.”
What’s in a name?
Speaking of self-belief, there’s one final thing I have to ask Ariarne about. Her name.
As someone with an unusual (for Australia) Irish name that I regularly have to explain, spell and pronounce for people, I was particularly intrigued by the origin story of hers.
In her memoir, she shares her name’s origin. Ariarne’s parents wanted their daughter to have a unique and memorable name. They eventually settled on a name inspired by “Ana” and “Oriana”. They later discovered the European Ariane rocket program and its education program, dubbed “Reaching for the Stars”. For a little girl who would go on to achieve extraordinary things, it seemed rather fitting. But, like me, Ariarne has spent much of her life correcting people who mispronounce or misspell her name (even at the Olympics).
“I actually love my name,” she tells me. “I’ve never met anyone with my name with the same spelling.”
Although she admits having an unusual name can sometimes be frustrating, she wouldn’t change it.
“I think it’s cool having an unusual name. I feel like it kind of sets you apart.” And I couldn’t agree more.
And while Ariarne’s parents could never have imagined just how far their little girl would go when they chose her name, the connection to reaching for the stars seems almost prophetic.
“I feel like I’ve lived many lives in my 26 years, and I don’t think I will ever understand truly what I achieved or the impact that I’ve had on people around me,” Ariarne admits. “I still look at myself as totally normal; I still pinch myself when I am at work or at speaking events and people introduce me to the stage. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like what I achieved is me. I did do it all. And I remember all of it, and I worked for it, and I’m super proud of everything I achieved.”
Now, with her swimming career behind her, a wedding to look forward to and new ambitions taking shape, Ariarne is discovering that there are plenty more stars to reach for.
Relentless by Ariarne Titmus, published by Allen & Unwin, is out now.
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