Italian Olympic champion Federica Pellegrini wants to swim in a fourth Olympics before calling it a career.
“I want to swim in the Olympics of 2016, then I will leave,” she told Italian magazine Grazia, according to Italian reports. “I want to be a wife, mother, with a quiet job.
“I am a very private person. I do not believe that, after my swimming, I’ll still want to be in the spotlight.”
Pellegrini, 25, won silver in the 200m freestyle at the 2004 Olympics at age 16. She won gold in the event four years later in Beijing in a world-record time.
She swept the 200m and 400m freestyles as the star attraction of the 2009 World Championships in Rome and repeated the feat two years later in Shanghai.
Though she finished fifth in both events at London 2012, Pellegrini improved back to silver in the 200m (behind Missy Franklin) at the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona.
