ALL SPORTS

After months of swimming hibernation, the triple Olympic gold medallist made it real yesterday. She signed the papers notifying swimming officials she had retired.

''It's funny but it doesn't feel weird actually because I've been out of it for so long [20 months since she last raced], it's more a technical thing I had to get over and done with,'' Henry said.

''It's been a gradual thing. I started to really enjoy my life without swimming, of not having to be home by a certain time because you have to train in the morning, or being constantly tired, and now that I have made the announcement, of not having people in my ear saying, 'don't fully retire yet you have so much more to do,' or 'I wish I could be you and have your talent'.

''At the end of the day if you don't enjoy it, then you're not going to succeed.

''It came down to whether I thought I was going to enjoy it again and the thought of getting back into it and swimming on [to London] was terrifying for me.''

She was Australia's darling in 2004. Three gold medals, the star of our Games' team, with sponsors making a queue. But beneath the surface the end was beginning.

It was after Athens things changed. She asked herself, where do you go after winning Olympic gold? She moved with her coach Shannon Rollason from Brisbane to the AIS in Canberra just five months after the Olympics and didn't like it. She would miss training sessions, and when she did go, she wanted to go home as soon as she arrived.

She changed coaches in Canberra for six months before returning to Rollason. By the end of 2007, she had had enough, and moved back to Brisbane to join Rollason's former assistant, Drew McGregor. Henry was then hit by a debilitating injury, eventually diagnosed as an imbalance in the muscle group around her pelvis, which caused her pain every time she swam. It cost her the chance to swim at the 2008 Olympic trials, and she announced she was taking a break. As of yesterday the break is over, and now, officially, so is Henry's swimming career.

''It was on a downhill slope from when I moved to Canberra,'' she admitted. ''It just wasn't right for me. I think to realise that was a really hard thing because I was good at what I did, and I thought I had to keep doing it for that reason. Finally, I thought, 'I don't enjoy this, maybe I shouldn't be doing it'.