Arizona Tribune - Gymnastics great Whitlock ends retirement in quest for 2028 Olympics

NYSE - LSE
VOD -0.54% 15.875 $
GSK -1.11% 51.835 $
RYCEF 1.22% 20.5 $
RIO -0.16% 105.13 $
BCE 0.29% 23.78 $
RBGPF 1.9% 69.89 $
BP -1.87% 43.94 $
BCC 0.75% 83.05 $
AZN -0.77% 164.71 $
JRI 0.28% 12.415 $
BTI 1.06% 56.81 $
CMSD 0.29% 21.04 $
RELX 1.1% 36.31 $
CMSC 0.23% 21.15 $
NGG 0.46% 80.13 $
Gymnastics great Whitlock ends retirement in quest for 2028 Olympics
Gymnastics great Whitlock ends retirement in quest for 2028 Olympics / Photo: Lionel BONAVENTURE - AFP/File

Gymnastics great Whitlock ends retirement in quest for 2028 Olympics

British gymnastics great Max Whitlock said Monday he plans to end his retirement in a bid to qualify for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Text size:

Whitlock, whose three Olympic gold medals -- two on the pommel horse and one on the floor -- make him Britain's most successful gymnast, appeared to have ended his celebrated career following the 2024 Paris Games.

But a failure to add his medal tally in France left Whitlock feeling unfulfilled.

"I was sitting in a station with my family in a cafe for a little bit (soon after Paris) and I said to them, 'I'm not done, I can't finish it like that'," Whitlock told The Times.

"It was the raw emotion of getting back to the UK and just feeling like I can't end it like that. Something just didn't feel right."

Whitlock, who will be 35 by the time of the next Olympics, is bidding to return to a GB gymnastics team boasting the likes of reigning floor world champion Jake Jarman, nine years his junior.

But he added: "Unfinished is the exact word. My career's just not complete. I thought, 'It's the right time for me to retire but it's not the right way'."

F.Ramirez--AT